When I was a teenager, my biggest lessons came from Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, George Strait, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley. I learned so much from opening up for those artists, and it also taught me how to treat your opening acts and make them feel like they’re part of a family, not just a tour.

I didn’t have any children of my own.

Too many people treat parenting like it’s the 20th item on their to-do list.

I wish I could play bass like Larry Graham or Bootsy Collins. My God, I’d give up just about everything else for that.

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

I did have two dads; one was a socialist, and one was a capitalist. I really decided I would rather be a capitalist.

In the ’60s and ’70s and early ’80s, the trainers would grind you, and eventually they would break something – they would break an ankle in ways that it would heal. It was just the way of the business, to ensure that you learned respect for wrestling.

My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.

There’s poetry in being the band that can sell out Wembley but also makes a record in a garage. I don’t like doing what people expect me to do.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

My work and my family are very important to me.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

It is totally different making films in the East than in the West. In the East, I make my own Jackie Chan films, and it’s like my family. Sometimes I pick up the camera because I choreograph all the fighting scenes, even when I’m not fighting. I don’t have my own chair. I just sit on the set with everybody.

On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

I really appreciate the moments that I was able to win rap album of the year or whatever.

I was always respectful of people who were deeply religious because I always felt that if they gave themselves to it, then it had to be important to them. But if you can go through life without it, that’s OK, too. It’s whatever suits you.

Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

I put out one album one week, and I’m already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.

It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put – without delay, and with tenderness – back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try.

Well, I have great respect for Senator Hirono.

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

In Hawaii, some of the biggest radio stations are reggae. The local bands are heavily influenced by Bob Marley.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.

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

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.

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

I always wanted a family.

I’ve always wanted a baby.

A record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill. Who was it said – one of the famous lady novelists – ‚unhappy is the family that contains an author‘?

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

I never saw any of my dad’s stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.

Together with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification. To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport.

I’ve accomplished enough with the music that I haven’t had to go out there and do other things to over-saturate.

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It’s still got the same strings on it.

I don’t think anyone ever plans to change line-ups, but it’s something that comes with being in bands. I was in a band once and there were always problems – members come and go – and some of the world’s biggest bands have changed line-ups loads!

Historically, the family has played the primary role in educating children for life, with the school providing supplemental scaffolding to the family.

If I’d had good discipline, I might have gone into music.

I feel that when you care about your music, taking risks is something you should do to keep things exciting.

Today, we’re still loaded down – and, to some extent, embarrassed – by ancient myths, but we respect them as part of the same impulse that has led to the modern, scientific kind of myth. But we now have the opportunity to discover, for the first time, the way the universe is in fact constructed as opposed to how we would wish it to be constructed.

‚Wrecking Ball‘ is a great song.

I think the first thing you should know is that nobody in country music ‚made it‘ the same way. It’s all different. There’s no blueprint for success, and sometimes you just have to work at it.

My grandmother took me to church on Sunday all day long, every Sunday into the night. Then Monday evening was the missionary meeting. Tuesday evening was usher board meeting. Wednesday evening was prayer meeting. Thursday evening was visit the sick. Friday evening was choir practice. I mean, and at all those gatherings, we sang.

I enjoy all forms of music – pop, classical and opera.

I have 22 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and they keep me young.

My songs are the door to every dream I’ve ever had and every success I’ve ever achieved.

I don’t even call them fans. I don’t like that. They’re literally just a part of my life; they’re a part of my family. I don’t think of them as on a lower level than me. I don’t think I’m anything but equal to all of them. So yeah, they’re basically all of my siblings.

I want to be a recording artist for my whole entire life. But Broadway is something I would come back to at any given moment. I love, love, love doing theater.

If something inconveniences my children too much or takes me away from them, I won’t do it.

Whenever something went wrong when I was young – if I had a pimple or if my hair broke – my mom would say, ‚Sister mine, I’m going to make you some soup.‘ And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

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

I did stand-up for my grandparents every day when I was, like, eight.

How to play music may be known. At the commencement of the piece, all the parts should sound together. As it proceeds, they should be in harmony while severally distinct and flowing without break, and thus on to the conclusion.

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

I’ve dreamed about doing music since I was three or four years old.

I always wanted to operate at the highest altitude, just in terms of hip-hop and the music.

I think country music is popular – has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it’s simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.