The thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you’re moved by the fact that it’s real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like ‚Let It Be‘ or ‚Long and Winding Road‘ or a song like ‚Bohemian Rhapsody‘ or ‚Roxanne,‘ any of those songs. They sound like people making music.

I learned how important it is to entertain people and give them a reason to come and watch you play.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

It’s often just enough to be with someone. I don’t need to touch them. Not even talk. A feeling passes between you both. You’re not alone.

I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.

The album requires a certain focus of mine that I can’t really explain – let’s just say it’s all I can really do while I’m doing it.

The best football is always about expression of emotion. Always.

Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.

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

All you need to do to be my friend is like me.

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.

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. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

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

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.

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

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.

If danger arises in the present moment, there may be an emotion. There may even be pain. But that’s a challenge, not a problem. For a problem to exist, you need time and repetitive mind activity.

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

I pay attention to lyrics and I know what rap fans care about. I try to write for the average listener and I’m conscious of the mainstream without selling out.

It’s not essential for me to have a big debut week; it’s not essential for me to have big radio records.

Rap was more of a release for me, a journal.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.

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

When I won the first Grammy, there was no other feeling like that feeling. It just made me feel like I came so far, like that was just a dream a few years before that, and then it was happening right then.

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.

The jazz I love is sweet and pure with raw elements, which is exactly what the good hip-hop is doing now.

My favorite record label of all time is Motown. That era of music was my favorite.

The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it – basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.

‚House of Balloons‘ was special because I had no deadlines, and nobody knew me, so there were no expectations. Spent a year making it perfect. Every song had at least, like, 7 different versions to them before picking the right one.

If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don’t back down.

Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster’s terms, ‚nirvana‘ means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.

I always say, you gotta play a dive bar like you play an arena, and you play an arena like you play a dive bar.

I never wanted to look pretty on stage and sing about something we’ve all heard about before.

I listen to my old records and I think, ‚How did I ever get on the radio?‘

Basically, I live to do gigs.

But I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.

I think we’re about ready for a new feeling to enter music. I think that will come from the Arabic world.

In case you’re wondering whether I lip synch, the answer is no… people think so because I sound so good.

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around – the music and the ideas.

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.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people.

I think I can keep a rhythm to a beat, but there are quite a few people who would argue with me.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.

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

I’ve made over 25 studio albums, and I think probably I’ve made two real stinkers in my time, and some not-bad albums, and some really good albums. I’m proud of what I’ve done. In fact it’s been a good ride.

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.

Some people are making music just for numbers and views.

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.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

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.

You can stroke people with words.

I don’t like the name, U2, actually.

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth.