Without music, life would be a mistake.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

What I’ve discovered is that in art, as in music, there’s a lot of truth-and then there’s a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It’s the moment that the audience falls in love.

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.

Getting money is not all a man’s business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

It was that famous joke: What’s the last thing the drummer said before he got kicked out of the band? ‚Hey, I wrote a song.‘

Keep in mind that no matter how perfectly you get your life in order, you will never be rid of all your problems. Problems are a way of life, always have been, always will be. But how you elect to view those problems is all up to you.

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have any songs that are about how much I love someone. They’re all either about, like, ‚I hate you,‘ or ‚You make me hate me.‘

Love is too young to know what conscience is.

I suppose, in a way, this has become part of my soul. It is a symbol of my life. Whatever I have done that really matters, I’ve done wearing it. When the time comes, it will be in this that I journey forth. What greater honor could come to an American, and a soldier?

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.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

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

From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.

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.

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.

In that film, the man and the part met. As far as I’m concerned, that part is Greg’s for life. I’ve had many, many offers to turn it into musicals, into TV or stage plays, but I’ve always refused.

To not follow your passion in life is a recipe for failure and unhappiness.

One day, I’ll be listening to a bunch of Ray Charles, the next day it’s nothing but Red Hot Chili Peppers. The next day it might be Tupac all day.

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

We live in a bewildering world.

If you have the opportunity to play this game of life you need to appreciate every moment. A lot of people don’t appreciate the moment until it’s passed.

To be awake is to be alive.

When ‚Paul’s Boutique‘ came out, I was one of the fans that didn’t get it.

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

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

I think music is something that can, and should, be used to get you into different things because eventually what goes up must come down – we’re not going to be the number one group in the world forever – so you have to have something else to fall back on.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

Cause I’m a musician, I’m not really good at posing and being a model, like, modeling.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

The great moments of rock ‚n‘ roll were never off in some corner of the music world, in a self-constructed ghetto.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

I can dance to just about anything.

I play piano and ukulele, and I taught myself those things just because I wanted to play them.

Being an artist doesn’t just mean you have a song. That doesn’t make you an artist. The word ‚artist‘ means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists – Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West – are doing the most.

If you talk bad about country music, it’s like saying bad things about my momma. Them’s fightin‘ words.

All my momma’s people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

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

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.

Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough.

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they’re going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It’s just a given law.

Anybody with a sense of humor is going to put on my album and laugh from beginning to end.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.

My dear brothers and sisters, the joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.