When we started, a lot of bands sounded really different from one another.

I’ve made over 25 studio albums, and I think probably I’ve made two real stinkers in my time, and some not-bad albums, and some really good albums. I’m proud of what I’ve done. In fact it’s been a good ride.

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.

Rap was more of a release for me, a journal.

I’m very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That’s my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it’s not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.

And I will do everything that I can as long as I am President of the United States to remind the American people that we are one nation under God, and we may call that God different names but we remain one nation.

It’s almost schizophrenic who I portray in my music.

We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn’t a matter of political correctness. It’s a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.

I’ve always been a singer. I never really decided I was gonna be a singer. It just kind of – I just sung a lot.

If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don’t back down.

In all my days of schooling, from preschool all the way up to 12th grade, there was not one white person in my class. Literally zero.

When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily I should have been in that band – or at least in a Pixies cover band.

There’s been people who’ve rapped and produced – like Kanye – but I don’t feel like on the rapping side there’s ever been a producer who can rap as good as I think I can rap.

We don’t want to promote any system that treats the fact that an individual is LGBT as a personality disorder. And anything that perpetuates that perception is harmful – not only to that member of the community but the entire community.

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 think the bottom of the totem pole is African-American women, or women of colour. I think they get the least opportunities in Hollywood.

I don’t just listen to rap.

I’m a huge fan of R. Kelly’s. He’s a musical genius and probably the most prolific artist of the generation before mine.

The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country – I know, because I am one of them.

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

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

I sing seriously to my mom on the phone. To put her to sleep, I have to sing ‚Maria‘ from West Side Story. When I hear her snoring, I hang up.

I’m not a sheep.

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don’t set out to say anything very important.

The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.

I just wanted to be a songwriter. I did really not like the sound of my own voice.

We don’t make music – it makes us.

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.

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 don’t want to just revolve. I want to evolve. As a man, as a human, as a father, as a lover.

It’s always fun to talk about jazz.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

Racism is real in this country.

We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.

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.

We uploaded ‚Ocean Eyes‘ to SoundCloud, and it started getting a lot of plays pretty much immediately.

I was 14, and I fell in love with Pink Floyd.

The thing about hip-hop today is it’s smart, it’s insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.

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

Chicago gave me more music than any other city in America.

God made me and broke the mold.

As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I’d eventually run out of steam on that, and that would’ve been the end of it.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

My mother knew how to read music and everything. But I just kinda learned off of records. And so, I was listening to records and I’d play ‚em over and over.

Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.

The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that.

Five or six songs leaked from the original version of ‚Encore.‘ So I had to go in and make new songs to replace them.

I believe that God breathed life into every person and that every person is made in the image of God and you have accept them as they are, on their journey. I’m not here to preach hate or push people down.

The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that’s the most interesting: the part that doesn’t go according to what you expected.

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

When it comes down to it, glam rock was all very amusing. At the time, it was funny, then a few years later it became sort of serious-looking and a bit foreboding.

Television sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really different than Blondie sounded really different than the Sex Pistols.

I couldn’t have written things like ‚Low‘ and ‚Heroes,‘ those particular albums, if it hadn’t have been for Berlin and the kind of atmosphere I felt there.

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

I don’t profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime, for instance.

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’m tri-racial: African-American, Native American and Euro – that’s the Scotch-Irish part.

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.

I think I can keep a rhythm to a beat, but there are quite a few people who would argue with me.