When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.

Members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir are not superhuman. They are ordinary people with ordinary frailties. But therein lies the power of their example.

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 love Chris Brown. He’s a superstar. He’s one of the best singers out there.

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

It’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

As the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

I love those who do not know how to live for today.

Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

I think my biggest musical hero growing up was probably Ian MacKaye. He set a great example for all of us local musicians. Still, to this day, I see him as the best example of a right-on musician.

I’ve always loved Def Leppard, ever since I was little.

And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it.

To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different; it takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination, and the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.

I was part of Jazzercise class. It was an aerobics routine accompanied by loud music, sounding quite awful to me. Jazzercise was popular in the ’80s and ’90s.

Don’t be a writer; it’s a terrible way to live your life. There’s nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don’t expect anything from anybody.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

There’s no formula.

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited – that has music and rhythm and time.

I owe everything to Nirvana. But I can’t let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn’t even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something.

I tell my fellow reggaetoneros, keep giving it your all and bring more creativity.

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.

There are 309 million people out there that are trying to improve their lot in life. And we’ve got a system that allows them to do it.

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

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.

I wish all teenagers can filter through songs instead of turning to drugs and alcohol.

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

Life can be boring unless you put some effort into it.

Writing is like anything else – the more you do it, the better you get at it, the easier it comes, and the less concerned you’ll be about what’s going to happen to it, where it’s going, what it sounds like, whether it’s right.

I just wanted to be a composer; I became an actor by default, really. I got a scholarship to a college of music and drama, hoping to take a scholarship in music. But I ended up as an acting student, so I’ve stuck with that for the last 50-odd years.

If this were all to go away tomorrow, all the big success, I would still be very happy going from bar to bar playing music for people.

In cricket, my superhero is Sachin Tendulkar. He has always been my hero and will continue to remain so. Apart from him and outside cricket, my mother has remained my inspiration. Whatever difficult time I had faced, she was always there for me. She has given me all the strength. She maintained her composure and supported me in tough times.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

When I joined Nirvana, I was the fifth or sixth drummer – I don’t know if they’d ever had a drummer they were totally happy with. And they were strangers. There was never much of a deeper connection outside of the music.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.

Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then, hope will come.

He who has courage and faith will never perish in misery!

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

People respond when you tell them there is a great future in front of you, you can leave your past behind.

I really wish I knew what I was doing because I’d be writing hit songs every minute.

I decided to sell my drawings. However, I didn’t want people to buy my drawings because the professor of physics isn’t supposed to be able to draw – isn’t that wonderful – so I made up a false name.

You listen to the radio and all the songs sound the same, from 8 in the morning to 12.

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

I don’t know how the rap game is, because I’m a fan of reality, and the rap game’s entertainment.

I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.

I just genuinely feel that that’s what you do when you’re an artist: You stick up for the people around you.

We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

The love of heaven makes one heavenly.