People tried to change my concept of what music is. That music is work, but it’s not like that.

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.

Music is in my DNA!

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

Change in all things is sweet.

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.

In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

My musical taste and image is going to change naturally. It’s not forced; I do what comes natural to me. Sometimes, I like to be dark… other times, I like to be really light and ladylike.

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

I don’t just listen to rap.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

No, I can’t do rap music!

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

I love Chris Brown. He’s a superstar. He’s one of the best singers out there.

The outside perception and inside perception of Microsoft are so different. The view of Microsoft inside Microsoft is always kind of an underdog thing.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

It’s very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

I was a strange, loud little kid who could sit at the piano and kill a Beethoven piece.

I just wanted to be a composer; I became an actor by default, really. I got a scholarship to a college of music and drama, hoping to take a scholarship in music. But I ended up as an acting student, so I’ve stuck with that for the last 50-odd years.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

My purpose is to make exciting music, and I feel like I’ll be doing that for the rest of my life, so there’s no pressure.

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.

I think that people are tired. They’re tired of the same old kind of politics. People want a new tone to politics.

My dad was into the 1950s doo-wop era. If you look at those groups, or at James Brown, Jackie Wilson and the Temptations in the 1960s, you’ll see you had to be sharp onstage.

Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.

‚Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.

If music be the food of love, play on.

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas.

It’s only I have seen enough of it and the funny thing is now, I know that I’m skinny, because I know there are even smaller clothes in the store. I think I’m big, when I was big, I never thought about it.

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.

Gentleness doesn’t get work done unless you happen to be a hen laying eggs.

If it weren’t for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.

Your personal history is a part of what happens with your hands and your head as you play music.

It’s kind of exhilarating, walking through a crazy, insane mob. The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last – but eat you he will.

I know people said I wasn’t selling out in America, but that was entirely untrue. We sold out all over the world, and every night I looked out into the fans and those front rows that you’re talking about, the tears, the honesty, the inability to not be completely overjoyed because they felt accepted.

I’ve made over 25 studio albums, and I think probably I’ve made two real stinkers in my time, and some not-bad albums, and some really good albums. I’m proud of what I’ve done. In fact it’s been a good ride.

Funk, I don’t think I have anything to do with funk. I’ve never considered myself funky.

My audience went, ‚Wait, why is she singing jazz? What’s going on?‘ And then they went, ‚Oh, because she can. Because she loves it.‘ And jazz, a music invented by the African-American community, is the greatest art form, I believe, to have ever come out of this country.

Everyone my age probably grew up listening to the ‚perreos‘ of Plan B.

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

I decided to pursue music, so I dropped out of school and I told my parents I didn’t want any money from them. I got three jobs and I just hit the ground running.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

The men who followed Him were unique in their generation. They turned the world upside down because their hearts had been turned right side up. The world has never been the same.

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.