We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‚n‘ roll or Christianity.

When all is said and done, what constitutes the impregnable superiority of Christianity over all other types of Faith is that it is ever more consciously identified with a Christogenesis: in other words, with an awareness of the rise of a certain universal Presence which is at once immortalizing and unifying.

The boys know they’re from Southeast Asia, and they have their food and their music and their friends, and they have a pride particular to them.

There’s been people who’ve rapped and produced – like Kanye – but I don’t feel like on the rapping side there’s ever been a producer who can rap as good as I think I can rap.

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.

My mami and papi love my music. They’re always listening to the radio waiting for one of my songs to come on. And when it does, they turn up the volume – and turn it back down when it’s over.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

A real Christian is a person who can give his pet parrot to the town gossip.

Life is a song to me.

Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would listen to the music of the people, or if I was in Italy, I’d listen to Italian music.

I wanted a name I could shape the music towards. I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba – ‚Lana Del Rey‘ reminded us of the glamour of the seaside. It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue.

The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way. They want to occupy your attention.

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.

I do like Burial; he’s so curiously clumsy, you can’t help but be moved. It’s so un-Hollywood, and the rhythms are so un-danceable.

I don’t intend to stop making music.

I believe in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

I get a thrill meeting kids who are into alternative music.

As long as my music is real, it’s no limit to how many ears I can grab.

I try to devote my afternoons to making music in my home studio, but it’s a lot more fun hanging out with musicians and friends, and trying subtly to influence a band than making your own stuff.

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.

Basically, I live to do gigs.

You pick up some fans and a handful of haters along the way.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.

Fill the earth with your songs of gratitude.

There are many levels of Christianity. There are many notions about God. To believe that God is a person is just one of the notions of God that you can find in Christianity. So, we should not say that there is one Christianity. There are many Christianities.

I sing seriously to my mom on the phone. To put her to sleep, I have to sing ‚Maria‘ from West Side Story. When I hear her snoring, I hang up.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

I am a Catholic.

It is far more difficult to murder a phantom than a reality.

I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one’s temper and disturb one’s quiet.

Anybody that doesn’t like Cardi B a hater!

I definitely think, generally, rap is misogynistic.

Hell is a half-filled auditorium.

I just know that I’m a fan of all different kinds of genres. You’re supposed to be free doing music, and that’s how I feel.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people.

If I heard someone else singing like me, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

I sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production, just like most of my movies were.

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.

If you talk bad about country music, it’s like saying bad things about my momma. Them’s fightin‘ words.

I think the word rich is all relative.

Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven’t been made easier technically.

There are some Christian people who taste and see and enjoy religion in their own souls, and who get at a deeper knowledge of it than books can ever give them, though they should search all their days.

I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.

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

If you want to find the source of much of the music of modern day Russia, you will find it in the incredible compositions of that crazed lunatic Berlioz.

That thing about being an icon, the fifth Beatle, I just found it so freaky.

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music – these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.

I have found that, in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of animals, the organs of sense are duller and coarser. Thus, it is composed of less ingenious instruments, and of spaces less capacious for receiving the faculties of sense.

Music, even with these dial-up connections you have to the Internet, is very practical to download.

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

My music definitely comes from a place of experience. Everything connects to a truth.

We based the look on rock ‚n roll right from the beginning.

I love the Sex Pistols. I’m a big Beach Boys fan and a huge Zeppelin and Queen fan.

Zappa was very technical and impressed by things that were musically challenging – weird time signatures, strange keys, awkward chord sequences. Zappa was important to me as an example of everything I didn’t want to do. I’m very grateful to him, actually.

He does it with better grace, but I do it more natural.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

Lyrics are so important, but they’re really underrated.

If you ever see young artists, and they’re not sounding good, they sound good. They’re good singers. They wouldn’t be where they are if they didn’t sound good. It’s their nerves. Any time you see your favorite artist, and he’s or she’s screwing up or not hitting those notes, it’s not because she can’t hit it or she can’t sing; he or she is scared.