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

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.

I play the harmonica. The only way I can play is if I get my car going really fast, and stick it out the window.

Usually, when Nirvana made music, there wasn’t a lot of conversation. We wanted everything to be surreal. We didn’t want to have some contrived composition.

We don’t make music – it makes us.

A good song never gets old.

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

Men don’t care what’s on TV. They only care what else is on TV.

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

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.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

Funk, I don’t think I have anything to do with funk. I’ve never considered myself funky.

I don’t think anyone ever plans to change line-ups, but it’s something that comes with being in bands. I was in a band once and there were always problems – members come and go – and some of the world’s biggest bands have changed line-ups loads!

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

Zappa was very technical and impressed by things that were musically challenging – weird time signatures, strange keys, awkward chord sequences. Zappa was important to me as an example of everything I didn’t want to do. I’m very grateful to him, actually.

From the time that ‚Nevermind‘ came out in September of 1991 to the time that Nirvana was over, it was really just a few years, and a lot happened in those few years.

There’s no difference between movies and television. None at all. Except in a lot of cases, television’s much better than movies.

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

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

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

It is one thing to record an album but it’s a huge difference when people play it and listen to it and embrace it the way that I do. It has always been my dream to get my music out to the world and have people hear it.

I don’t know how to function without music. When I’m not making it, I’m listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston, I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, ‚Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.‘

I can’t see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That’s terrible.

I’ve accomplished enough with the music that I haven’t had to go out there and do other things to over-saturate.

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.

I enjoy all forms of music – pop, classical and opera.

I remember talking with Arcade Fire after their first record, when they were getting all kinds of offers from major labels, and I don’t think I gave them any advice. They survived that whole onslaught pretty well anyway without me.

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

I’ve always loved Def Leppard, ever since I was little.

I know people said I wasn’t selling out in America, but that was entirely untrue. We sold out all over the world, and every night I looked out into the fans and those front rows that you’re talking about, the tears, the honesty, the inability to not be completely overjoyed because they felt accepted.

For instance, I’m always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

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

My music definitely comes from a place of experience. Everything connects to a truth.

My father moved to Hawaii from Brooklyn and my mother came there as a child from the Philippines. They met at a show where my dad was playing percussion. My mom was a hula dancer.

Basically, I live to do gigs.

When you’re singing you can hear the echo of people in the audience singing every single word with you, and that was that big dream that I had for myself. It’s happening.

People are used to music that justifies street culture but something that’s not touched on is why these kids act the way they act, live the way they live.

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don’t set out to say anything very important.

It’s kind of exhilarating, walking through a crazy, insane mob. The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

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

My purpose is to make exciting music, and I feel like I’ll be doing that for the rest of my life, so there’s no pressure.

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

The average family spends 30 hours in front of a television, and they say they don’t have the time to have a balanced, integrated life.

In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.

Latin music is universal.

When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily I should have been in that band – or at least in a Pixies cover band.

There’s been people who’ve rapped and produced – like Kanye – but I don’t feel like on the rapping side there’s ever been a producer who can rap as good as I think I can rap.

I love movement. I love moshing.

Music is part of the life of fashion, too.

Environment is very important to me. Sometimes I have to perform during the day for festivals, and my music does not work in the daytime. It is nighttime music.

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.

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

I’ve been on tour since I was 16, and I always do meet-and-greets before and after shows, so you kind of build these friendships with people. I have girls come up to me and tell me exactly what’s going on in their love lives.

I made an album I’m very proud of, and that’s about it.

I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice.