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.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

O, had I but followed the arts!

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

Bill Gates has always been a mentor and inspiration for me even before I knew him. Just growing up, I admired how Microsoft was mission-focused.

You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

My music seems to have a bigger mission than I have, which is very soothing but also very strange because people see more in me than I see, which can be terrifying.

When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, ‚Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.‘

Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

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.

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.

I wrote ‚Channel Orange‘ in two weeks. The end product wasn’t always that gritty, real-life depiction of the real struggle that happened.

I love being on stage, I love being able to tell a story, I love the fact that the audience listens and laughs at it. It makes me happy, and it’s what I live for.

My songs are the door to every dream I’ve ever had and every success I’ve ever achieved.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren’t as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it – young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous – is changed by it.

A home without books is a body without soul.

I’m not in control of my muse. My muse does all the work.

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.

When I started making my own records, I had this idea of drowning out the singer and putting the rest in the foreground. It was the background that interested me.

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.

Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.

I hope my story inspires everyone out there to keep hustling and chasing their dreams.

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.

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.

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

I’ve been asking myself: ‚Why put together these things – CDs, albums?‘ The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it’s artistically viable. It’s not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it’s not obvious or even conscious on the artists‘ part.

No press, no television. If my mom calls and says, ‚Did you hear about?‘ I don’t want to know nothing about anything that is going on in relation to music. I shut it all off.

I believe in singing to such an extent that, if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing becomes a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for cooperation with others.

When I’m stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

I never had to choose a subject – my subject rather chose me.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

Sometimes people make it seem like you have to have certain prerequisites or a crazy life story in order to be successful in this world. But the truth is you really don’t.

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

Hope is not a resting place but a starting point – a cactus, not a cushion.

When Hillary was First Lady, we went to the Beijing Women’s Conference. She courageously stood up and spoke out on behalf of human rights and women’s rights, inspiring millions to fight for a better future.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

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.

One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.

To live without Hope is to Cease to live.

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

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

It’s kind of like a challenge to myself to be able to hear somebody else’s hook and kind of interpret the words. Because my own hooks, I already know what I mean when I write them.

Even if my songs are quite sad or quite dark, I don’t want my songs to make people sad. It’s very important for me that all my songs have some kind of hope or light.

You practice mindfulness, on the one hand, to be calm and peaceful. On the other hand, as you practice mindfulness and live a life of peace, you inspire hope for a future of peace.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

I want to be an Asian Robert De Niro.

Almost everything that is great has been done by youth.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg – I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

At 57, to have a No. 1 album, I wasn’t expecting it.

There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

I’m a writer first and a singer second. And then I started editing my own videos when I was 17, so it’s a process I’ve been doing since I was younger.