Taylor Swift’s audience can listen to me, but so can the street kids. I want to touch it all.

I feel like my music has become a lot of things. It’s hard to label the evolution, but I like there to be an evolution. I just like to paint with all different kinds of colors.

I’m super serious about music. That’s, like, the only thing I’m serious about.

We are separated from God on two sides; the Fall separates us from Him, the Tree of Life separates Him from us.

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.

Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

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.

Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work. But I think that the U2 audience have turned out to be incredibly subtle in their understanding.

I could sing you a thousand and one doo-wop songs. I love the simplicity in that music. It’s not super-poetic, it’s just from the heart.

I’ve never wanted to use my age as a gimmick, as something that would get me ahead of other people. I’ve wanted the music to do that.

I really am a fan of Ye’s music.

Fill the earth with your songs of gratitude.

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation.

People are generally proud of their food. A willingness to eat and drink with people without fear and prejudice… they open up to you in ways that somebody visiting who is driven by a story may not get.

Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster’s terms, ‚nirvana‘ means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story.

The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.

The human animal cannot be trusted for anything good except en masse. The combined thought and action of the whole people of any race, creed or nationality, will always point in the right direction.

No one tells me what to do with my music. Real. My mom doesn’t tell what to say, how is someone else going to?

I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I’m not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.

I feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is – I don’t even want to say that it’s mine, because it’s yours.

It’s always going to be a fight for anyone who isn’t an older white man. I want to fight for anyone who doesn’t have a fight.

It’s absolutely normal that different human beings want to go different ways.

I do have a lot of gays in my family now, but some will never come out.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

I love artists like Prince, who hold on to that element of mystery.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

Live-tweeting your bikini wax is not vulnerability. Nor is posting a blow-by-blow of your divorce . That’s an attempt to hot-wire connection. But you can’t cheat real connection. It’s built up slowly. It’s about trust and time.

I remember being in Japan when Destiny’s Child put out ‚Independent Women,‘ and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way.

Today, I’d like to talk to Bob Marley. I’d just like to ask him what was his method. Bob is one of the greatest songwriters ever. I don’t know if people understand how powerful his songs are and the simplicity and genius behind them, from ‚Redemption Song‘ to ‚Is This Love?‘ and ‚I Shot the Sheriff.‘

And later, if I ever felt that I was getting swept away by the craziness of being in a band, well, I’d go back to Virginia.

I’m an iPod person.

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.

We moved into the back, made it into a little 50s sitting room and started to sell the records. We had an immediate success. For one thing, these Teddy Boys were thrilled to buy the records.

When the kids are laughing in the audience, I tear up, I’m so happy I did a nice thing.

Music is something no one can control.

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

I’m tri-racial: African-American, Native American and Euro – that’s the Scotch-Irish part.

There’s something about pulling out a real tape from a shelf and looking at it and knowing that ‚Everlong‘ is on it, or ‚Best of You‘ is on it, and it’s really special.

Science arose from poetry… when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.

How to play music may be known. At the commencement of the piece, all the parts should sound together. As it proceeds, they should be in harmony while severally distinct and flowing without break, and thus on to the conclusion.

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, ‚We’re black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we’re all brought up differently.‘

I listen to music that is of our time and I just get angry.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

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

Good psychology should include all the methodological techniques, without having loyalty to one method, one idea, or one person.

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‚n‘ roll or Christianity.

Our country does not believe in the concept of your God and my God. We believe that all gods are one. We have different ways of accepting Him. All ways lead to Him.

Television sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really different than Blondie sounded really different than the Sex Pistols.

That thing about being an icon, the fifth Beatle, I just found it so freaky.

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music – these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.

If this were all to go away tomorrow, all the big success, I would still be very happy going from bar to bar playing music for people.

While musical experts of the world focus on what choir members can do, I would like to focus on what choir members can be.

John Lennon was definitely my favorite Beatle, hands down.

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came.