My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.

I happened to come along in the music business when there was no trend.

One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you’re allowed to fail.

I love to play music. So why endanger that with something like drugs?

There’s more good music being made now than ever before.

I’m not in control of my muse. My muse does all the work.

We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.

Becoming an inspiration for kids is great. I want to inspire them to do whatever they want to.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.

My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.

Life’s a bit like mountaineering – never look down.

Phish and Dave Matthews really know their audiences and really treat them well.

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

Being an artist doesn’t just mean you have a song. That doesn’t make you an artist. The word ‚artist‘ means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists – Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West – are doing the most.

What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.

I think if we didn’t contradict ourselves, it would be awfully boring. It would be tedious to be alive.

They do not love that do not show their love.

For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn’t really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I’m trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

Music is my shining light, my favorite thing in the world. T get me to stop doing it for one second would be difficult!

The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest.

I love America, it’s a much more permissive place.

I was part of Jazzercise class. It was an aerobics routine accompanied by loud music, sounding quite awful to me. Jazzercise was popular in the ’80s and ’90s.

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

I subscribe to the myth that an artist’s creativity comes from torment. Once that’s fixed, what do you draw on?

Synergy is better than my way or your way. It’s our way.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

What gift has providence bestowed on man that is so dear to him as his children?

The reason children accept discipline from their parents is because they know their parents love them.

The love of heaven makes one heavenly.

I absolutely adore Christmas.

You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.

Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

I don’t want to make niche-oriented music.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.

The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

I don’t think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the author has not in the least thought about it in terms of film, which can be turned into good films.

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.

I don’t think there’s an option for me to fall in love slowly or at medium speed. I either do, or I don’t.

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.

The way up and the way down are one and the same.

Of course, ‚I Will Always Love You‘ is the biggest song so far in my career. I’m famous for several, but that one has been recorded by more people and made me more money, I think, than all of them. But that song did come from a true and deep place in my heart.

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

We love things we love what they are.

I try to really capitalize off of what other rappers really can’t do. There are opportunities that rappers I love simply can’t get, because… you know… I don’t have the tattoos; I have a different image.

I can make something magical and wonderful out of nothing.

In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form. You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature. You look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love.

I love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script.

I really learned to sing in church, I think, really with emotion.