My music seems to have a bigger mission than I have, which is very soothing but also very strange because people see more in me than I see, which can be terrifying.

The prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part of one’s furniture.

We become what we repeatedly do.

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

I just want to keep writing music.

Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.

The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path.

I make good music for long journeys.

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.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

Learn to say ‚no‘ to the good so you can say ‚yes‘ to the best.

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

You’re looking at a middle-class guy. I am who I am.

I’m a painter in sound.

Nothing can be by itself alone, no one can be by himself or herself alone, everyone has to inter-be with every one else. That is why, when you look outside, around you, you can see yourself.

If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.

Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

I think beating myself up sometimes and knowing I am not happy when I do it makes me work harder to do a good job.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.

Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.

Most of my young years were spent under the boots of the military.

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.

To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

We have a choice about how we take what happens to us in our life and whether or not we allow it to turn us. We can become consumed by hate and darkness, or we’re able to regain our humanity somehow, or come to terms with things and learn something about ourselves.

One of the huge imbalances in life is the disparity between your daily existence, with its routines and habits, and the dream you have within yourself of some extraordinarily satisfying way of living.

I suppose for a very long time I’ve been trying to understand how it is that people might make sense out of their lives and make meaning and make their lives meaningful in the face of the trouble that life brings.

It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

I can understand how some people might resent me for having the audacity to continue playing music, but it’d take a lot more than that to stop me from doing it. I started Foo Fighters because I didn’t want to retreat.

People gonna be they own individuals and have they own worlds and I can’t knock it.

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.

I came up from a difficult background.

Know that any and all thoughts that you have regarding your own skills, interests, and inclinations are valid. To reinforce the validity of your thoughts, keep them private. Tell yourself that they’re between you and God.

I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.

Responsibility is the price of freedom.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

Taylor Swift’s audience can listen to me, but so can the street kids. I want to touch it all.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

Someone told me something that stuck with me: ‚You have to envision your life, and then go backwards.‘ I’ve been living by that motto for a while, so I see where I need to be. Now I’m just backtracking and trying to get back up there.

I don’t really regard myself as a political figure.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

I’m not frightened of appearing vulnerable.

I’m selfish.

I think I’m pretty smart. I think I’m pretty clever. But there’s a lot that you hone in on when you finish your education.

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

When it comes down to it, glam rock was all very amusing. At the time, it was funny, then a few years later it became sort of serious-looking and a bit foreboding.

Yeah, I like to keep myself interested – I’ll kind of throw myself into some area that I don’t completely know or understand, that I’m not adept at, so I’m forced to swim in order to stay afloat. There’s a good feeling that comes from that.

Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.