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.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

I’ve made over 25 studio albums, and I think probably I’ve made two real stinkers in my time, and some not-bad albums, and some really good albums. I’m proud of what I’ve done. In fact it’s been a good ride.

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society. And I think talking in everyday terms and making sure people can understand it – I think that’s important.

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.

A game is like a mirror that allows you to look at yourself.

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!

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.

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

When I put out ‚Video Games‘ in May 2011, it was a 5:25-minute love song; I was surprised when a lot of people said they were listening to it. I was surprised when it went to the radio, without me even knowing how something like that even happens!

Men who have reached and passed forty-five, have a look as if waiting for the secret of the other world, and as if they were perfectly sure of having found out the secret of this.

I’ve copyrighted 3,000 songs.

There’s only one thing that can kill the movies, and that’s education.

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They’re my biggest heroes. I love everything about Leonard Cohen: his lyrics and his voice. He seems like a really clever man, and Bob Dylan does as well. He’s just really cool.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

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

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

What I like about music is the songs you can remember the lines of in a single second.

Nobody knows me.

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.

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

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

I kinda like the idea of having an album that’s all me.

There is too much government today. We’ve got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people, and for the people.

If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.

I just wanted to be a composer; I became an actor by default, really. I got a scholarship to a college of music and drama, hoping to take a scholarship in music. But I ended up as an acting student, so I’ve stuck with that for the last 50-odd years.

Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‚Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this‘ – have become commonplace in films and music too.

I love Wiz Khalifa.

Go to you bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

Compton got such a legacy in hip-hop.

It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

In my songs, I’m not saying something that’s never been said before. The have lyrics aren’t going to blow people away. It’s the emotion and the melody that drive it home.

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 enjoy singing my songs in front of people.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

The relationship to one’s fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one’s striving.

The great music for so many artists – the Beatles, the Rolling Stones – was always at the moment when they were closest to pop. It would be easy for U2 to go off and have a concept album, but I want us to stay in the pop fray.

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

I think I don’t take myself too seriously. You know as far as, it’s a fun life. I take my music serious, but I like to have fun.

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

The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

The truth of it is that every singer out there with songs on the radio is raising the next generation, so make your words count.

Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.