The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.

Older people sit down and ask, ‚What is it?‘ but the boy asks, ‚What can I do with it?‘.

I don’t intend to stop making music.

When I got depressed, I watched Bruce Lee movies. I learned everything from Bruce Lee.

I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn’t express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

In the late 1960s, the masses were supposed to be passive, not entering into the public arena and having their voices heard.

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

To master a new technology, you have to play with it.

I’ve learned never to say never.

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

In fairy tales the bad guy is very easy to spot. The bad guy is always wearing a black cape so you always know who he is.

You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.

I really like Lady GaGa and everything she is for her fans.

I always use Michael as, first and foremost, a vocal inspiration, and ‚Off the Wall‘ was definitely the one that made me feel like I could sing.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

Sometimes it’s a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.

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.

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

The only source of knowledge is experience.

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.

Listen, I think that people want a president who is going to be interested in the things that keep them up at night, the things that are weighing on them, the things that are debilitating and can be addressed.

Wanting to feel good is synonymous with wanting to feel God.

At the start of the season, there are 16 teams in the top division looking behind them, making sure they avoid relegation. The fear starts in the boardroom, comes down to managers and through to players. The fans sense it.

I was never particularly fond of my voice.

Human beings need stories, and we’re looking for them in all kinds of places; whether it’s television, whether it’s comic books or movies, radio plays, whatever form, people are hungry for stories.

That is never too often repeated, which is never sufficiently learned.

I just want to keep writing music.

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

I didn’t get trained by the school system like other kids, and when I did concentrate on learning, my mind was cluttered and locked by the programming of the system.

The secret of being a bore… is to tell everything.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

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.

One often makes music to supplement one’s world.

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.

Honestly, I never really put the mic down.

The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

I wouldn’t put myself forward to do a film like ‚Changeling‘ if I thought I couldn’t pull people into a story because of all the other ways people see me.

I don’t think I’d ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.

With action films, it’s great if it’s not just driven by action, but by a good story and interesting characters, as well. Though, there’s nothin‘ like kicking butt!

I always have been an activist for things that were just authentically a part of my life, that I felt connected to.

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.

So there’s nothing more provocative than taking a genre that everybody who’s cool hates – and then making it cool.

You know how you either grow up in a Michael Jackson house or a Prince house? For me it was Michael Jackson. I could never decide whether I wanted to be Michael Jackson or marry him.

The only frustrating thing about jail is that I can’t make music.

It’s more interesting for me to figure out how to be superior in areas where I’m naive, where I’m a novice.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

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

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.

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

They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus, that means guns, sex, lies, video tapes, but if I talk about God my record won’t get played Huh?

Sometimes I do need to go to karaoke, sometimes I need to relax.

I love music, and after my first experience with movies, I can’t wait to do more.

If you can’t read, the only thing you can do is enjoy the pictures, not the whole story. Reading is the key to knowledge. Knowledge is the key to understanding. So read on, young man! Read on, young lady!

I have made a few mistakes early on that I admit myself, and there have been times when I have gone over the top and done things that you shouldn’t do in international cricket, but that’s how you learn.

I do think there must be some kind of interaction between your living life and the life that goes on from here.

Cause when you’re sequencing a record, you want the listener to stick with it from beginning to end, and in order to do that, you really have to map out the journey from the first song to the last.

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.