When I did ‚Bird,‘ it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn’t in it and second because most of the films I’d been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me.

‚Jolene‘ has been very popular all of these years, even overseas.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

If I’m going to get you to do stuff, I need to lead you. I can’t just order you to do it.

I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream – I was surprised to find it happening.

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

I love Wiz Khalifa.

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know.

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.

I do value the respect I get from my contemporaries, but to have Oasis cover my song, to have Puff Daddy cover a song, to have Goldie come along to my gigs – that’s where my ego is at. To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that’s very cool.

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.

I’m not a big believer in trying to jam stuff down somebody’s throat: ‚You’re going to do it my way.‘ I’d rather show by example and live my life and have people say, ‚You know what, I want to live like Joel has. He’s got peace and joy, and he seems content.‘

I’m just writing, writing, writing. I keep these tablets on me until I’m inspired to go back in and make the music. I never take a break from my pen, because I pride myself on that.

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

What I like about music is the songs you can remember the lines of in a single second.

Making music is like shopping for me. Every song is like a new pair of shoes.

People tend to play in their comfort zone, so the best things are achieved in a state of surprise, actually.

I have certain guys who I looked up to. Jordan, Kobe, those guys. Passing that on to doing my part to kind of keep that influence of basketball where it should be is kind of why I play the game.

On a good night, I get underwear, bras, and hotel-room keys thrown onstage… You start to think that you’re Tom Jones.

You know, my sister sings, my brother plays drums in my band. My whole family is a bunch of musicians.

Your personal history is a part of what happens with your hands and your head as you play music.

Married or single, you sisters possess distinctive capabilities and special intuition you have received as gifts from God. We brethren cannot duplicate your unique influence.

Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

I can dance to just about anything.

It’s terrifying to play your favorite band’s song in front of your favorite band.

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

I have always enjoyed watching my songs make people cry.

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, ‚Huh. It works. It makes sense.‘

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

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

Searching for music is like searching for God. They’re very similar. There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.

We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.

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

He who has great power should use it lightly.

I really am a fan of Ye’s music.

The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret.

I think that, whatever happens, I’m just happy I’ve written those songs and I’ve made an album. That’s really big for me, and I’m proud of that.

People tried to change my concept of what music is. That music is work, but it’s not like that.

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

I never could get over the fact that The Pixies formed, worked and separated without America taking them to its heart or even recognizing their existence for the most part.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

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.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have any songs that are about how much I love someone. They’re all either about, like, ‚I hate you,‘ or ‚You make me hate me.‘

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.

I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.

I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar – hide in the back and just play.

Despite all I have seen and experienced, I still get the same simple thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb towards it.

‚House of Balloons‘ was actually supposed to have more songs than it does.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

Occasionally, I hanker for the time when I sold more records, but I don’t sit and drool about it. When I do look at early footage of Talking Heads, I realise I was just a wreck.

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.

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!

I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I’m going through or what’s going on in my life at that moment.

Compton got such a legacy in hip-hop.