Songs don’t have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I’ve done is about alienation… about where you fit in society.

The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.

‚Wrecking Ball‘ is a great song.

The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one’s people that has not previously been taken into account.

To live is to think.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

You listen to the radio and all the songs sound the same, from 8 in the morning to 12.

I know my flaws before other people point them out to me.

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

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

I’m putting out this free music, constantly putting it out.

There are certain sounds that I’ve found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music.

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.

There’s a reason why the Foo Fighters don’t blast out Nirvana songs every night: because we have a lot of respect for them. You know, that’s hallowed ground. We have to be careful. We have to tread lightly. We have talked about it before, but the opportunity hasn’t really come up, or it just hasn’t felt right.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

Man is a universe within himself.

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 just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.

Chicago gave me more music than any other city in America.

Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

I don’t spend that much time being introspective, believe it or not. All I know is that I grew up not questioning God because that’s how you are. God was there like the birds and the wind.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

I felt like I might as well have been living in another part of the solar system.

Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called ‚Ego‘.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

It’s so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.

I’ve always loved black culture; I don’t know any other way to put it. Since I was a kid I loved music and early jazz, Sly and the Family Stone. I’m older – I’m in my early 50s – so you’ll have to excuse me. That was always very exciting to me to connect to the culture on that level.

It’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

I have observed that society in general always seems to honor its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.

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

Stop this attitude that older people ain’t any good anymore! We’re as good as we ever were – if we ever were any good.

You say that you are my judge; I do not know if you are; but take good heed not to judge me ill, because you would put yourself in great peril.

Music is really driving my whole life.

It is hard to read a newspaper or watch a television newscast without encountering someone who has come up with a new ‚solution‘ to society’s ‚problems.‘

Our single most important challenge is therefore to help establish a social order in which the freedom of the individual will truly mean the freedom of the individual.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

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.

Life is a song to me.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

We live in ugly times.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.

The finest clothing made is a person’s own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives… inside ourselves.

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.

The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.

When I was born, that was the music my mother was listening to. Michael Jackson is a third parent to me.

I went through all the musicians in my life who I admire as bright, intelligent, virtuosic players.

The darkness, the loop of negative thoughts on repeat, clamours and interferes with the music I hear in my head.

I listen to music all day every day. I can’t not listen to music. It’s kind of scary how much I listen to music, but it’s what I love, and it’s all I care about, so I’m good with it.

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.

You can have the platinum album. But, you know, when you still feel like you haven’t quite found your place in the world, it kind of gives a crazy offset.

When I joined Nirvana, I was the fifth or sixth drummer – I don’t know if they’d ever had a drummer they were totally happy with. And they were strangers. There was never much of a deeper connection outside of the music.

All of my music is honest.

I really appreciate the moments that I was able to win rap album of the year or whatever.