So there’s nothing more provocative than taking a genre that everybody who’s cool hates – and then making it cool.

I don’t even listen to rap. My apartment is too nice to listen to rap in.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

The prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part of one’s furniture.

When I was performing the songs on ‚Kiss Land,‘ it was a great singalong. But there were moments where I realized some parts were catchier than the others. There’s maybe two choruses on all of ‚Kiss Land.‘

Cause I’m a musician, I’m not really good at posing and being a model, like, modeling.

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

I feel that when you care about your music, taking risks is something you should do to keep things exciting.

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

The first rap CD that I had, it was so different for me. The energy, the wordplay, all that caught my attention, and I liked it.

The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities.

Once you’ve changed who you are or who you’ve portrayed in your music, the fans, they’ll catch it… Once I feel like the world knows me for anything else but my music, then I feel like I failed.

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

At twelve I looked like a girl of seventeen. My body was developed and shapely. I still wore the blue dress and the blouse the orphanage provided. They made me look like an overgrown lummox.

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

I want to make pop cool again, and the only way I can do that is by being ambitious and grand.

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.

When I listen to music these days, and I hear Pro Tools and drums that sound like a machine – it kinda sucks the life out of music.

I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth.

I wish all teenagers can filter through songs instead of turning to drugs and alcohol.

I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.

India has to be transformed into a developed nation, a prosperous nation and a healthy nation, with a value system.

I love to play. And fortunately, I don’t know a lot of musicians that suck. I know a bunch of really good ones, and they’re always up for playing.

The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.

The thing about hip-hop today is it’s smart, it’s insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.

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

I wrote ‚Channel Orange‘ in two weeks. The end product wasn’t always that gritty, real-life depiction of the real struggle that happened.

I won’t be satisfied until people want to hear me sing without looking at me. Of course, that doesn’t mean I want them to stop looking.

The end is the beginning of all things, Suppressed and hidden, Awaiting to be released through the rhythm Of pain and pleasure.

I grew up on the Beatles; I love Linkin Park and Green Day. I heard hip-hop for the first time at 11 and realized what I was missing.

If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.

Baseball changes through the years. It gets milder.

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

When I listen to ‚Nevermind,‘ I hate the production, but there’s something about it that almost makes me cry at times.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

I love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

You can’t really imagine music without technology.

The mineral world is a much more supple and mobile world than could be imagined by the science of the ancients. Vaguely analogous to the metamorphoses of living creatures, there occurs in the most solid rocks, as we now know, perpetual transformation of a mineral species.

‚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.‘

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

Lyrics are so important, but they’re really underrated.

I’ve started doing book reviews for Barnes & Noble! They saw that I did a lot of book reviews on the site, and they figured that it might not be a bad thing if they got me to do some for them as well. I gave them five categories I’d be interested in reviewing, from art to fiction to music.

Conversion is a change of masters. Will we not do as much for our new master, the Lord Jesus, as we did once for our old tyrant lusts?

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

Life is a lively process of becoming.

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

The most propagandistic element of ‚Frozen‘ was the transformation of the prince at the beginning of the story, who was a perfectly good guy, into a villain with no character development whatsoever about three-quarters of the way to the ending.

I’m not into albums that are meant to sound perfect.

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.

When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that’s not something I could do.

I love good, loud speakers.

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.

I don’t live for the accolades. I’m more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.

I do put a lot of God in my music, but not because I’m super religious. There are a lot of demons in my music, too. I acknowledge both.

Once elected, the Pope is by virtue of the promise of Jesus to Peter, the Pope is preserved from the possibility of error. God would change any spend thrift politician into a responsible Pope.

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

I don’t know if I ever feel totally great about a record when I put it out. With every record that I put out, someone has literally got to come pry it from me because when I listen to my own music, I just hear flaws in it.

To destroy is always the first step in any creation.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

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.