Robyn is who I am. Rihanna – that’s an idea of who I am.

I am not The Rock. I am Dwayne Johnson.

If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don’t back down.

I never intended for the Monster Ball to be a religious experience, it just became one.

I do sometimes look back at things I’ve written in the past, and think, ‚I just don’t remember being the person who wrote that.‘

I think women want freedom. They want to be empowered. They want hope. They want love; they want all the things that I want, and I’m not afraid to say those things and act on them, and I think that’s why they identify with me.

Doo-wop is special music to me because it’s so straightforward and melody-driven and captures emotions.

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.

I love being a part of the country-music community.

When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‚Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.‘

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

The vibe on ‚Starboy‘ comes from that hip-hop culture of braggadocio, from Wu-Tang and 50 Cent, the kind of music I listened to as a kid.

I write all of my own speeches.

Where I come from it was really unheard of to be at a party and someone says, ‚What kind of music do you make?‘, and you say, ‚Pop music.‘ You may as well have ‚I’m not cool‘ stamped on your forehead.

I like Cardi B!

I can dance to just about anything.

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

I didn’t try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.

I just hope people don’t get sick of us. I’m sick of us and I’m in Destiny’s Child.

Mick Fleetwood was one of my first interviews. And if you’ve ever talked to that dude, he’s the sweetest guy in the world – he’s just a trip.

I know some people might think it odd – unworthy even – for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people’s poet so I write for the people.

The basis of our partnership strategy and our partnership approach: We build the social technology. They provide the music.

Celebrity life and media culture are probably the most overbearing pop-cultural conditions that we as young people have to deal with, because it forces us to judge ourselves.

U2 is an original species… there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.

I guess it’s flattering that everyone believed I was those characters, but it also is dehumanizing.

My life is my argument.

I’m not afraid to write my feelings in songs.

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

I’ve always been a singer. I never really decided I was gonna be a singer. It just kind of – I just sung a lot.

Rock ‚n‘ roll is ridiculous. It’s absurd. In the past, U2 was trying to duck that. Now we’re wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss.

I realized the power of hip-hop. I realized how influential this music and this culture are.

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

I love Wiz Khalifa.

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.

I think it’s important as an artist to never forget where you’re from.

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

It seemed like a very small possibility for me to become an artist. I didn’t have the need to be on the stage; I didn’t feel the need to be heard. I just needed to write.

Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that’s stripped down.

How I love David Bowie.

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I’m watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they’re painted, could be art. With music, you’re a little bit limited, of course, because it’s only audio.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

If I heard someone else singing like me, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point?

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It’s still got the same strings on it.

I would say that jazz is my own language.

People like music when they’re in love, but they don’t need it as much. You need music when you’re missing someone or you’re pining for someone or you’re forgetting someone or you’re trying to process what just happened.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

What I think is fair to say is that, coming out of the Republican camp, there have been efforts to suggest that perhaps I’m not who I say I am when it comes to my faith – something which I find deeply offensive, and that has been going on for a pretty long time.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

Nicki Minaj, will you marry me?

I’d love to do a duet, always wanted to work with Madonna, but she never asked.

All of my songs are autobiographical.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

I believe in singing to such an extent that, if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing becomes a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for cooperation with others.

I feel like when I try to fit in, it comes across as not genuine, and that is not good. I’d rather just do me and have people say, ‚Oh. That’s interesting,‘ than try to fit in.

No press, no television. If my mom calls and says, ‚Did you hear about?‘ I don’t want to know nothing about anything that is going on in relation to music. I shut it all off.

We based the look on rock ‚n roll right from the beginning.

If you feel that there’s the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can’t, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you’d be a very strange person indeed.

We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm.

Zappa was very technical and impressed by things that were musically challenging – weird time signatures, strange keys, awkward chord sequences. Zappa was important to me as an example of everything I didn’t want to do. I’m very grateful to him, actually.