Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster’s terms, ‚nirvana‘ means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.

I tell my fellow reggaetoneros, keep giving it your all and bring more creativity.

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

When my record comes on, you know that’s a DJ Khaled record. That’s my formula, and the people love it.

I will not leave South Africa, nor will I surrender. Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can freedom be won. The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days.

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

People have been fed this diet of pabulum, rights, and impulsive freedom. There’s just an absolute starvation for the other side of the story.

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

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

Most people wouldn’t know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.

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

I want you to feel happy and enjoy the theatre of my life the way that I do. No matter what happens with my music and wherever I go – that heart of that glamorous girl in New York will never be gone.

I love the Sex Pistols. I’m a big Beach Boys fan and a huge Zeppelin and Queen fan.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.

Pretty much my whole life, I’ve been a performer and have loved singing and writing songs in my room for my own ears.

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

A people free to choose will always choose peace.

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

At first, I was scared to show fear because you can never be sure how people will perceive you. But I dared myself to do that, to stand out. Now I’ll talk about being beaten up or robbed or making a stupid decision because of a girl or whatever.

I think if I did something in the pop world right now, it would be for Rihanna. I’d love to do something production wise for her.

Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

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

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

I can simply tell you that since I was a kid, I didn’t like to look like anyone else.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

We uploaded ‚Ocean Eyes‘ to SoundCloud, and it started getting a lot of plays pretty much immediately.

Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

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

I play piano and ukulele, and I taught myself those things just because I wanted to play them.

I write for myself things that I’ve gone through.

I think ‚Hail to the Chief‘ has a nice ring to it.

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.

It’s easier to aim to please and say what others want to hear than to form an opinion and fight for it, even if it means taking a risk or losing your job.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

I think ‚Invisible‘ is a great song, but I don’t know how accessible it is.

I feel much freer now that I am certain the pope is the Antichrist.

The best road to progress is freedom’s road.

I think that, whatever happens, I’m just happy I’ve written those songs and I’ve made an album. That’s really big for me, and I’m proud of that.

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.

My father moved to Hawaii from Brooklyn and my mother came there as a child from the Philippines. They met at a show where my dad was playing percussion. My mom was a hula dancer.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

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.

The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I’ll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master… it’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

I think my biggest musical hero growing up was probably Ian MacKaye. He set a great example for all of us local musicians. Still, to this day, I see him as the best example of a right-on musician.

It’s terrifying to play your favorite band’s song in front of your favorite band.

I ain’t here to argue about his facial features. Or here to convert atheists into believers. I’m just trying to say the way school need teachers the way Kathie Lee needed Regis that’s the way yall need Jesus.

Everybody always laughs because I feel so much more comfortable with, like, a giant paper bag on my whole body and paint on my face. Sometimes I try really hard to take it all off. But inevitably what’s underneath is still not a straight edge. And I don’t think it ever will be.

You listen to Charlie Parker or John Coltrane before they found their voice, they sounded different. And when you listen to them after they found their voice on their instruments, they sound more confident and in control. Artists have that, too.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

I think what made it difficult for people to get, and still makes it difficult for people to get, is the theatrical nature of the work and the fact that, my music doesn’t exist without the performance-art element.

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.

I was the first person to have a punk rock hairstyle.