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.

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

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.

The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don’t have.

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

We love things we love what they are.

I don’t like headphones very much, and I rarely listen to music on headphones.

I used to think that, given enough goodwill, anybody would be able to ‚get‘ any music, no matter how distant the culture from which it came. And then I heard Chinese opera.

Even with all of the things that are so awful, if you walk into your yard and stay there looking at almost anything for five minutes, you will be stunned by how marvelous life is and how incredibly lucky we are to have it.

My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim.

It’s obviously tricky to convert cellulose to a useful biofuel. I think actually the most efficient way to use cellulose is to burn it in a co-generation power plant. That will yield the most energy and that is something you can do today.

I was doing sold-out shows before I got radio play.

I don’t listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I don’t have a car.

Canada is rich in hydrocarbons and other natural resources… India’s requirements and Canada’s surplus are a perfect match.

In a long meter hymn, a singer – they call it ‚lays out a line.‘ And then the whole church joins in in repeating that line. And they form a wall of harmony so tight, you can’t wedge a pin between it.

My audience went, ‚Wait, why is she singing jazz? What’s going on?‘ And then they went, ‚Oh, because she can. Because she loves it.‘ And jazz, a music invented by the African-American community, is the greatest art form, I believe, to have ever come out of this country.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

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.

Music is part of the life of fashion, too.

I’m no hillbilly singer.

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.

After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one’s person.

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.

It was that famous joke: What’s the last thing the drummer said before he got kicked out of the band? ‚Hey, I wrote a song.‘

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it’s so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

I used to love Kurt Cobain, when he was telling people we’re a pop band. People would laugh, they thought of it as good old ironic Kurt. But he wasn’t being ironic.

I like the idea of a kind of eternal music, but I didn’t want it to be eternally repetitive, either. I wanted it to be eternally changing. So I developed two ideas in that way. ‚Discreet Music‘ was like that, and ‚Music for Airports.‘ What you hear on the recordings is a little part of one of those processes working itself out.

I’m not claiming divinity. I’ve never claimed purity of soul. I’ve never claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can… But I still believe in peace, love and understanding.

Today we say that the law of relativity is supposed to be true at all energies, but someday somebody may come along and say how stupid we were.

From the beginning of my rap career, since I was seen and heard, I always had a store.

Most people wouldn’t know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.

You can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don’t have to be in love with anyone.

There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.

I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar – hide in the back and just play.

The effect of music on fashion has been immense, especially hip-hop and urban music.

I think everybody deserves an equal amount of appreciation whether how old they are, but I mean, I’m cool with the praise. I’m good.

You know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap – and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and ‚Heart Shaped Box‘ and stuff on ‚In Utero‘ just happened that way.

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

I feel like the reason people feel like they know me is because I’m giving you myself in the music. There’s where the connection comes from; you can’t Twitter that.

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 my daddy. My daddy’s everything. I hope I can find a man that will treat me as good as my dad.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.

Genres aren’t closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.

I owe everything to Nirvana. But I can’t let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn’t even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something.

Five or six songs leaked from the original version of ‚Encore.‘ So I had to go in and make new songs to replace them.

I do like Burial; he’s so curiously clumsy, you can’t help but be moved. It’s so un-Hollywood, and the rhythms are so un-danceable.

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

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.

The Beatles created something that never trailed off. What a gift that was to their fans. If you’re into the Beatles, you loved them from beginning to end.

To all the musicians, to the Academy, with all due respect, reggaeton is part of our Latin culture. And its representing as much as any other genre at the worldwide level.

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

I don’t think of Kurt as ‚Kurt Cobain from Nirvana‘. I think of him as ‚Kurt‘. It’s something that comes back all the time. Almost every day.

We came up with TDE. As competitive as rap is, and as much as we’re trying to exceed the standards we set for ourselves, we take their wins as our wins, too.

All the evidence, experimental and even a little theoretical, seems to indicate that it is the energy content which is involved in gravitation, and therefore, since matter and antimatter both represent positive energies, gravitation makes no distinction.

I wish I could play bass like Larry Graham or Bootsy Collins. My God, I’d give up just about everything else for that.

People should just buy a CD and rip it. You are legal then.

The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.

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