Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!

Some people are making music just for numbers and views.

Who I am on stage is very, very different to who I am in real life.

My music will go on forever. Maybe it’s a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.

My first job was singing on the Cas Walker radio show in Knoxville, Tennessee. I was about 10 years old, and I thought it was big time.

If you talk bad about country music, it’s like saying bad things about my momma. Them’s fightin‘ words.

I’ve got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.

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.

Working with a guy like Ice Cube on ‚Ride Along,‘ you learn so much. He’s a guy who produces, writes, and directs, so you watch and learn and ask questions. As you go, you learn and figure out what you should and shouldn’t do. I do nothing but soak up information.

When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

Being a stand-up is my mission in life; it’s my passion. My ongoing goal is to simply be funny, on my own, in front of a roomful of strangers.

The actual business of writing dialogue is not thought of as a craft.

One of my most popular songs, ‚Satellites,‘ I paid $300 for that beat on SoundClick.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

Actors know, with me they aren’t going to be allowed to rehearse a scene for a couple of hours and then get away with doing 25 takes before we get it right. So they come with their full bag of tricks.

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

Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.

Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.

Since I was old enough to understand what a songwriter/producer is, I’ve had a curiosity about how Max Martin creates what he creates. I wanted to see that happen. I wanted to be there. I wanted to learn from him.

Before I look stupid and not know what a word means or how to pronounce it, I’ll stop the whole production: ‚Hey, real quick, guys. Define this word for me. Somebody.‘

I’ve always felt music is the only way to give an instantaneous moment the feel of slow motion. To romanticise it and glorify it and give it a soundtrack and a rhythm.

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

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.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

How you go about testing is just very different to just being in the situation of qualifying, having to go out, having to nail the lap.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

I’m trying my best to keep up with all this new technology, and I surround myself with all these wonderful people that are in the know and kind of help me out with all that.

I performed in a bowling alley before while people were still bowling. Cut the check, and I will perform anywhere.

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

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

If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor.

I liberate minds with my music. That’s more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.

We dissect failure a lot more than we dissect success.

Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.

In Hawaii, some of the biggest radio stations are reggae. The local bands are heavily influenced by Bob Marley.

What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don’t really think that hard.

I wanted a name I could shape the music towards. I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba – ‚Lana Del Rey‘ reminded us of the glamour of the seaside. It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue.

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

You know how you either grow up in a Michael Jackson house or a Prince house? For me it was Michael Jackson. I could never decide whether I wanted to be Michael Jackson or marry him.

Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less.

Sometimes in the past when I played something might make me lose focus, or I would go home after a game where I thought I could have played better and I would let it hang over my head for a long time when it shouldn’t.

How I love David Bowie.

‚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.‘

Honestly, I’d love to be remembered as one of the best to ever pick up a mic, but if I’m doing my part to lessen some racial tension I feel good about what I’m doing.

Education is important because it prepares you for life.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

Yeah, I like to keep myself interested – I’ll kind of throw myself into some area that I don’t completely know or understand, that I’m not adept at, so I’m forced to swim in order to stay afloat. There’s a good feeling that comes from that.

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

I get really motivated when I put on the India jersey. It is a responsibility, so I want to perform in the best way I can.

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

I’m just looking to learn, grow, stay focused, and become a better fighter and a better athlete.

There’s poetry in being the band that can sell out Wembley but also makes a record in a garage. I don’t like doing what people expect me to do.