When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras.

In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.

I love Wiz Khalifa.

I had practiced with the team, and the first scheduled game was with the University of Missouri. They made it quite clear to the Army that they would not play a team with a black player on it. Instead of telling me the truth, the Army gave me leave to go home.

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

I’m personally more struck by visual things more than musical.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

I decided to pursue music, so I dropped out of school and I told my parents I didn’t want any money from them. I got three jobs and I just hit the ground running.

Music is always a commentary on society.

I think if I did something in the pop world right now, it would be for Rihanna. I’d love to do something production wise for her.

Racism is real in this country.

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

I’m half-black, half-white, so I basically put it like this: I can fit in anywhere. That’s why I write so many stories from so many different perspectives, because I’ve seen so many.

One of my most popular songs, ‚Satellites,‘ I paid $300 for that beat on SoundClick.

I was always singing but didn’t plan on pursuing it seriously. 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.

I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

I always thought that there was nothing an antifeminist would want more than to have women only in women’s organizations, in their own little corner empathizing with each other and not touching a man’s world.

The thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you’re moved by the fact that it’s real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like ‚Let It Be‘ or ‚Long and Winding Road‘ or a song like ‚Bohemian Rhapsody‘ or ‚Roxanne,‘ any of those songs. They sound like people making music.

Speaking purely from a musical standpoint, I think I am a great performer.

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

From the moment I started writing raps, I was always aware of the pressure. I always wanted to live up to how huge Snoop got, how huge Dre got, how huge Pac got. I was always aware.

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

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas.

I have some good friends of my own who happen to be gay, and when it comes to gay, straight, or whatever, I’m for anything life-affirmative. I’m for gay power, straight power, male power, female power; everybody should feel empowered without oppressing anyone who’s different.

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

I love artists like Prince, who hold on to that element of mystery.

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

We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.

I’m not into albums that are meant to sound perfect.

I’m not looking to exclude people, I’m looking to include them.

All women have a perception much more developed than men. So all women somehow, being repressed for so many millennia, they ended up by developing this sixth sense and contemplation and love. And this is something that we have a hard time to accept as part of our society.

If you’re white and you’re wrong, then you’re wrong; if you’re black and you’re wrong, you’re wrong. People are people. Black, blue, pink, green – God make no rules about color; only society make rules where my people suffer, and that why we must have redemption and redemption now.

We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old – and that’s the criterion by which I’ll be selecting my judges.

I get that racism exists, but it’s not a catalyst for my content. I don’t need to talk about race to have material. My style of comedy is more self-deprecating. I think that makes me more relatable. When you deal with ‚topics‘ – race, white versus black – you’re not separating from the pack. You’re doing what everybody else is doing.

I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.

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.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

Pakistan is not a unified country.

Anything that encourages people to pick up an instrument and play, I’m fully behind.

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it’s so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

I try to see the good in everybody, and I don’t care who people are as long as they’re themselves, whatever that is.

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

Dropkick Murphys get me going, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana… plus, all the regular hip-hop stuff.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.

In our society, the women who break down barriers are those who ignore limits.

Man, that record came out and was real big in Memphis. They started playing it, and it got real big. Don’t know why-the lyrics had no meaning.

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.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

You know why Foo Fighters have been a band for 20 years? Because I’ve never really told anybody what I think of them. The last thing you ever want to do is go to therapy with your band.

Mariah and Whitney Houston were my goddesses growing up.

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

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

The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.

Songs are my diaries; they always have been. You have to put your trust in everyone because putting down those real, personal details and thoughts that make a song authentic also opens you right up. I am constantly misunderstood; a lot of people just don’t get me.

People gonna be they own individuals and have they own worlds and I can’t knock it.

We have a Boesendorfer piano that I play every day. It keeps my brain and my fingers active.

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