Performing is a thing in itself, a distinct skill, different from making recordings. And for those who can do it, it’s a way to make a living.

I can play a lot of different instruments adequately but nothing really well.

All I have to say is basically if performing, singing, acting, and dancing is what you want to do, then you just have to do it – no matter where it is.

Why, if someone is good in one field can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?

I grew up listening to the Police, I grew up performing in bars, singing Police songs.

Of course, it does depend on the people, but sometimes I’m invited places to kind of brighten up a dinner table like a musician who’ll play the piano after dinner, and I know you’re not really invited for yourself. You’re just an ornament.

When a country has the skill and self-confidence to take action against its biggest problems, it makes outsiders eager to be a part of it.

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

I learned how important it is to entertain people and give them a reason to come and watch you play.

Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.

Even though I’m known as a pop musician, I have a seriousness about what I do.

We record when I have a hole in the schedule. Sometimes night, sometimes afternoon, sometimes morning – we fit it in when we can. I prep for episodes all the time.

I taught myself to play the guitar by listening to Paul Simon records, working it out note by note. He is an incredibly intelligent musician. He’s not someone who has a natural outpouring of melody like McCartney or Dylan, who are just terribly prolific with musical ideas.

I’m a singer, not a politician, and I think you don’t want the two to get confused. It’s not OK to be on CNN talking about people starving and then tell the interviewer that your new album is coming out in six months.

Well I think any author or musician is anxious to have legitimate sales of their products, partly so they’re rewarded for their success, partly so they can go on and do new things.

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

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

Upon the farm of the uncle with whom I lived, we did know of the mortgage as some dreadful damper on youthful hopes of things that could not be bought. I do have a vivid recollection that the major purpose of a farm was to produce a living right on the spot for the family.

I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.

And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I’m going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I’m going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.

You know, when Michael Jackson does the moonwalk, he’s showing off! When Prince or Hendrix do a guitar solo, it’s confidence! I would hate to be at a show and some nervous wreck is sweating up there and doesn’t feel like he deserves to be there.

I was a good football player, and I had a chance to play with some great players.

I have no definite talent or trade, and how I stay alive is largely a matter of magic.

I play a lot of instruments. I write all my own music. I spend hours and hours a day in the studio. I’m a producer. I’m a writer.

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

There is no God-given right to victory on the battlefield. You win that through the skill and the devotion, the valor and the ferocity of your troops.

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.

As for my stuff, I’m just doing guest verses for other people’s records. I try to stay recording, because if I don’t, I get rusty.

What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

I’ve been a mogul and executive since the beginning of my career. People are just born with that skill.

I never thought a career as a musician was possible.

All my momma’s people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.

I always loved that old song ‚Banks of the Ohio‘ – it was always such a man’s song, so I’ve always wanted to record it.

I wouldn’t say that I am one of the greatest dancers, but I am really quite good at what I do.

I ain’t never far away from a pencil and paper or a tape recorder.

If you win two games, one game or three games, you can still say it’s luck. But when you win a championship over 18 games, it’s not luck.

I’m gonna be making records anyway, even if I had to sell ‚em out of the trunk of my car. I’m that kind of musician and singer.

I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar – hide in the back and just play.

The reason that I’m here at all is because of my relationship with my family and their encouragement of me to be a musician and to work hard. As long as I stay there in that space, I can do anything. That’s my truth.

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.

I love performing, you know, because, like I say, I’m a ham for this stuff.

I don’t want people at my shows to come out and say, ‚I just saw a cool show.‘ I want them to say, ‚I had fun at the show.‘ I want it to be a collaborative thing and be part of the audience and have them be part of me. I try to interact with everyone there and have them be equal to me because they are.

When I’m writing, I’m thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don’t translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you.

I was a super once – an extra – in ‚Die Fledermaus,‘ and was seated within three feet of Placido Domingo. I had never heard a voice of that beauty so close up. It felt as if an electric shock were running through me.

The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman’s heart.

An empowered organisation is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organisational success.

I don’t really like to call myself a brand, and I don’t like to think of myself as a brand. I’m a singer, a songwriter, a musician and a performer. And an actress, and all the other things that I do. When you add it all together, some might call it a brand, but that’s not my focus.

I think generally playing live is a crap idea. So much of stage work is the presentation of personality, and I’ve never been interested in that.

If I weren’t performing, I’d be a beauty editor or a therapist. I love creativity, but I also love to help others. My mother was a hairstylist, and they listen to everyone’s problems – like a beauty therapist!

I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.

Nothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word – and actually wanting to see you.

My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record.

Those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade.

If this were all to go away tomorrow, all the big success, I would still be very happy going from bar to bar playing music for people.

I’m not actually a very keen performer. I like putting shows together. I like putting events together. In fact, everything I do is about the conceptualizing and realization of a piece of work, whether it’s the recording or the performance side.

Rhythm is something you either have or don’t have, but when you have it, you have it all over.

I’ve rarely seen video screens used well in a music concert.