My grandfather once ventured upon publishing a volume of hymns. I never heard anyone speak in their favour or argue that they ought to have been sung in the congregation. In that volume, he promised a second if the first should prove acceptable. We forgive him the first collection because he did not inflict another.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

I was always singing but didn’t plan on pursuing it seriously. When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

Making your dad happy is – especially for an Italian Catholic girl, I’ll tell you – it feels really good.

I think your values are always influenced by your family and your community.

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

Doing music to pay bills is an uncomfortable situation. I never wanted to be in that situation.

I refuse to feel guilty. I feel guilty about too much in my life but not about money. I went through periods when I had nothing, so somebody in my family has to get stinkin‘ wealthy.

I think we’re about ready for a new feeling to enter music. I think that will come from the Arabic world.

I take my kids to school. And if I go to work, I go to work, and they visit me on set. I come home. I have dinner with my family. I have breakfast with my family. I have a very solid, very warm home.

Every family should have the right to spend their money, after tax, as they wish, and not as the government dictates. Let us extend choice, extend the will to choose and the chance to choose.

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I’ll forgive Thy great big joke on me.

I am a Christian, and the Bible teaches me to forgive.

I’d love it if everyone knew one Foo Fighters song.

When I do listen to music, I’m more prone to listen to the people I’ve always listened to: George Jones, Otis Redding, Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris.

When I was a teenager, my biggest lessons came from Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, George Strait, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley. I learned so much from opening up for those artists, and it also taught me how to treat your opening acts and make them feel like they’re part of a family, not just a tour.

I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I’m blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.

I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar.

Fans are my favorite thing in the world. I’ve never been the type of artist who has that line drawn between their friends and their fans. The line’s always been really blurred for me. I’ll hang out with them after the show. I’ll hang out with them before the show. If I see them in the mall, I’ll stand there and talk to them for 10 minutes.

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

Confidence, as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.

I was doing sold-out shows before I got radio play.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

All of my brothers and sisters are very talented. They all sang all right.

I used to love Kurt Cobain, when he was telling people we’re a pop band. People would laugh, they thought of it as good old ironic Kurt. But he wasn’t being ironic.

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

Country radio is much more like a family than any other group of people that I’ve met.

Songs don’t have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I’ve done is about alienation… about where you fit in society.

Many of my fans often tell me that they listen to my songs to get through things. And therefore, obviously, I hope that they can picture being in a place where things are better… I hope my songs can bring people to a calm place.

I don’t like headphones very much, and I rarely listen to music on headphones.

Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.

I don’t know if I ever feel totally great about a record when I put it out. With every record that I put out, someone has literally got to come pry it from me because when I listen to my own music, I just hear flaws in it.

You see, at the end of the day, my most important title is still ‚mom-in-chief.‘ My daughters are still the heart of my heart and the center of my world.

Although God loves us unconditionally, He does get angry at sin, wickedness and evil. But He is not an angry God. God hates sin, but He loves sinners! He will never approve of sin in your life, but He always loves you and wants to work with you to make progress in living a holy life in Christ.

I wanted to drop three albums in a year because no one had done it. It was bold, unheard of.

I wanted to be in a punk band before I had even heard any punk music.

Wagner manages to convey emotion with music better than anyone, before or since.

Music is in my DNA!

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury.

I never wanted to look pretty on stage and sing about something we’ve all heard about before.

I love artists like Prince, who hold on to that element of mystery.

I think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.

From the beginning of my rap career, since I was seen and heard, I always had a store.

I never thought, in my lifetime, that you’d be able to watch movies, read books and listen to music from a phone, but I guess the technology of tomorrow is here today.

In a certain way, it’s the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.

It’s a privilege to serve the poor, to be servants of noble Africans, but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That’s where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head.

I like the idea of a kind of eternal music, but I didn’t want it to be eternally repetitive, either. I wanted it to be eternally changing. So I developed two ideas in that way. ‚Discreet Music‘ was like that, and ‚Music for Airports.‘ What you hear on the recordings is a little part of one of those processes working itself out.

A lot of times, people feel that if they forgive the person who hurt them, then they will continue to take advantage of them or not take responsibility for what they did wrong.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.

My goal is just to be respected as a man when I walk down the street with my family. I don’t care what your job is, you’re not gonna talk down to me, you’re not gonna try to get a rise out of me. I’m a man first. And in establishing that, some interesting things have happened.

I knew I was blessed with a gift of having both parents.

It’s important to love in hip hop.

I feel like the reason people feel like they know me is because I’m giving you myself in the music. There’s where the connection comes from; you can’t Twitter that.

Now I will say this to every sinner, though he should think himself to be the worst sinner who ever lived: cry to the Lord and seek Him while He may be found. A throne of grace is a place fitted for you. By simple faith, go to your Savior, for He is the throne of grace.

I don’t know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.