To all the musicians who are making reggaeton, let’s put some more effort into it and bring something new to the people!

I’m a big perfectionist! I’m trying to channel super-confident women like Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey and Beyonce, because I realized that if you want something, you really have to go for it, just like they do.

There is a difference between what technology enables and what historical business practices enable.

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed… Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday’s dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

I never wanted to be the next Bruce Lee. I just wanted to be the first Jackie Chan.

I’m not interested in people positioning me next to other artists.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

I have fun with ideas; I play with them.

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future.

As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.

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.

I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it’s going to happen.

I just wanted to be a songwriter. I did really not like the sound of my own voice.

I can’t see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That’s terrible.

When I was born, that was the music my mother was listening to. Michael Jackson is a third parent to me.

I think a number of the leaders are, whether you like it or not, in the hip-hop generation. And when they understand enough, they’ll do wonders. I count on them.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.

I think ‚Invisible‘ is a great song, but I don’t know how accessible it is.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

Think off-center.

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.

I am an artist, and I have the ability and the free will to choose the way the world will envision me.

Writing is such a strange, utterly mysterious process. First, there was nothing; then, suddenly, there was something. I don’t know where thoughts are born. Where the hell does it come from? I don’t know. I really don’t know.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

I love the name of honor, more than I fear death.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work.

I always want to create and do things, or draw.

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.

It’s all make believe, isn’t it?

To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the making of bread.

No matter what has happened to you in the past or what is going on in your life right now, it has no power to keep you from having an amazingly good future if you will walk by faith in God. God loves you! He wants you to live with victory over sin so you can possess His promises for your life today!

If you can ask a young man to give his life for his country, you can lead people.

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

Most of my songs have names of people I’ve met or are dear to me. There are people who have privacy issues and about people knowing about their private life. But for me, I like to include few special names and few details about them to make the song very special to me.

Research is creating new knowledge.

I went through all the musicians in my life who I admire as bright, intelligent, virtuosic players.

I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.

Music is part of the life of fashion, too.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

I realized the power of hip-hop. I realized how influential this music and this culture are.

A word of encouragement from a teacher to a child can change a life. A word of encouragement from a spouse can save a marriage. A word of encouragement from a leader can inspire a person to reach her potential.

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

I don’t control my writing – it controls me.

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

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.