The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

The prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part of one’s furniture.

Cause I’m a musician, I’m not really good at posing and being a model, like, modeling.

God cannot be realized through the intellect. Intellect can lead one to a certain extent and no further. It is a matter of faith and experience derived from that faith.

Now, God be praised, that to believing souls gives light in darkness, comfort in despair.

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

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

To the best of my judgment, I have labored for, and not against, the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us is the difference of circumstances.

Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there’s no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out on my deck and look out at the garden.

The word ‚belief‘ is a difficult thing for me. I don’t believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it – I don’t need to believe it.

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.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I’ve seen on some of the songs that I’ve written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

I was ready to quit music. It felt to me like music equalled death.

When I joined Nirvana, I was the fifth or sixth drummer – I don’t know if they’d ever had a drummer they were totally happy with. And they were strangers. There was never much of a deeper connection outside of the music.

We’re in the last days, man – I truly, in my heart, believe that. It’s written. I could go on with biblical situations and things my grandma told me. But it’s about being at peace with myself and making good with the people around me.

Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.

I tried to give the world a bit of creativity, lyrics. And for me, I will always represent music from Puerto Rico, reggaeton, Latin music.

I’ve always felt music is the only way to give an instantaneous moment the feel of slow motion. To romanticise it and glorify it and give it a soundtrack and a rhythm.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

I’m a huge fan of R. Kelly’s. He’s a musical genius and probably the most prolific artist of the generation before mine.

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.

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.

I always say I wanna work with Alicia Keys. I’m in awe of her.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I’d written? Yes. There’s many of them!

It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.

Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.

You get to a point where it’s like you can’t really do anything right, and people will pick on you for whatever decisions you make, so I just try and take no notice and get on with my music.

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

I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfil our destiny, but our fate is sealed.

Well, we can’t say any more than we can say there is no god, there is no afterlife. We can only say there is no persuasive evidence for or argument for it.

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

I have to admit I’ve found myself doing the same things that a lot of other rock stars do or are forced to do. Which is not being able to respond to mail, not being able to keep up on current music, and I’m pretty much locked away a lot. The outside world is pretty foreign to me.

I’ve always been a fan of melody and emotional melancholy, whether it was Rites of Spring or Tears for Fears or Neil Young. If I hear a song that has a sweet melody, I’m a sucker for it, whether it’s Linkin Park or Little Richard.

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

But, I’ve always loved John Mayer and I think T-Pain is brilliant.

If there really is a god, then he really looks after me.

Phish and Dave Matthews really know their audiences and really treat them well.

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

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.

If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.

Life is a song to me.

Men willingly believe what they wish.

I’d like to do a completely off-the-wall collaboration. I would like one of my songs to be the hook to a rap song. That would be so much fun!

I just want to keep writing music.

Faith is about trusting God when you have unanswered questions.

Man, I’m the No. 1 living and breathing rock star. I am Axl Rose; I am Jim Morrison; I am Jimi Hendrix.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

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

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

One of my goals from really early on was that if I was ever fortunate enough to be successful in music, I would want to stay the same person and the same songwriter.

When we trust God more than our feelings, it confuses the devil. I mean, when he throws you his best shot and he can’t budge you from believing God, he won’t know what to do with you anymore.

‚They‘ are the people that don’t believe in you, that say that you won’t succeed. We stay away from ‚They.‘

People – especially white people – they want me to be a role model just because of the life I lead. The things I say in my songs, they expect it of me.

Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.