When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.

And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I’m going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I’m going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.

I want to thank The Beatles for almost single-handedly getting me out of writer’s block.

I really love the culture of hip-hop.

Rap was my drug.

I like Cardi B!

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

If you hear Anarchy in the UK today your hair stands on end. It gives you the shivers.

I’m definitely gaining new fans, and that’s the key of any success… gain more love.

Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.

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

There are certain sounds that I’ve found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

When I’m writing, I’m thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don’t translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you.

‚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.

I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.

My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

I have to practice to be good at guitar. I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

And later, if I ever felt that I was getting swept away by the craziness of being in a band, well, I’d go back to Virginia.

Nothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word – and actually wanting to see you.

Whatever I’m feeling, whatever I’m going through, whatever mood I’m in… If I’m feeling like dancing or clubbing, then it will be reflected in the music. If I’m feeling dark and vulnerable, then it will reflect in the music, too.

I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best – I mean, when I’m at my best – of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.

You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.

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.

Thanks to my fans that have been with me from the beginning, I was able to sell out arenas on my own.

Taylor Swift’s audience can listen to me, but so can the street kids. I want to touch it all.

No, I can’t do rap music!

My fans love me for me, my beats, my rhymes.

I like the idea of a kind of eternal music, but I didn’t want it to be eternally repetitive, either. I wanted it to be eternally changing. So I developed two ideas in that way. ‚Discreet Music‘ was like that, and ‚Music for Airports.‘ What you hear on the recordings is a little part of one of those processes working itself out.

I play the harmonica. The only way I can play is if I get my car going really fast, and stick it out the window.

For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.

I don’t know, I feel desperate when I sing. And I look desperate – it feels like I’m singing for my life, which makes me twitch, if that makes sense.

I don’t want to do free jazz! Because free jazz – which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering – isn’t actually free at all. It’s just constrained by what your muscles can do.

The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

I can operate in half-a-song format.

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.

Everyone my age probably grew up listening to the ‚perreos‘ of Plan B.

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

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

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that’s pretty much all you can ask.

Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.

I don’t take pictures when I’m with my kids, for the sake of my kids. It’s important when you’re as busy as I am that you give your kids your time when you’re with them, and nothing compromises that. I’ve been lucky enough to have fans that understand that.

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.

There’s always gonna be rock n‘ roll bands, there’s always gonna be kids that love rock n‘ roll records, and there will always be rock n‘ roll.

It’s always fun to talk about jazz.

I started playing violin in the 5th grade. They had a program in school where you could get out of class to go play instruments. So I raised my hand, left out of class, me and a bunch of my homeboys, just to get out of class for that day. They asked what instrument you wanted to play and I picked the violin.

Genres aren’t closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.

I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.

I grew up listening to the Police, I grew up performing in bars, singing Police songs.

I knew the second I finished the first record – ‚House Of Balloons‘ – and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.

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.

I sing and play the guitar, and I’m a walking, talking bacterial infection.

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

I’ve been in the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus since I was 8.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

It’s always great to perform at home in the good ol‘ U.S.A.

If it’s illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail!

‚In Utero‘ was the first time I’d made an album that reached into the dark side. I remember the conflict and the uncertainty. I remember all those things when I hear ‚Pennyroyal Tea.‘

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

The basis of our partnership strategy and our partnership approach: We build the social technology. They provide the music.