You know how you either grow up in a Michael Jackson house or a Prince house? For me it was Michael Jackson. I could never decide whether I wanted to be Michael Jackson or marry him.

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

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

When I put out ‚Video Games‘ in May 2011, it was a 5:25-minute love song; I was surprised when a lot of people said they were listening to it. I was surprised when it went to the radio, without me even knowing how something like that even happens!

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.

Taylor Swift’s audience can listen to me, but so can the street kids. I want to touch it all.

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.

I learned to walk as a baby, and I haven’t had a lesson since.

You know, my sister sings, my brother plays drums in my band. My whole family is a bunch of musicians.

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.

No one tells me what to do with my music. Real. My mom doesn’t tell what to say, how is someone else going to?

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

The innocence of childhood is like the innocence of a lot of animals.

I’ve been a huge fan of Chris Martin forever; it’d be awesome to work with him. He’s really kind, and he’s been really encouraging when we’ve met.

I wrote ‚Channel Orange‘ in two weeks. The end product wasn’t always that gritty, real-life depiction of the real struggle that happened.

Usually, when Nirvana made music, there wasn’t a lot of conversation. We wanted everything to be surreal. We didn’t want to have some contrived composition.

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

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

All the learnin‘ my father paid for was a bit o‘ birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

Environment is very important to me. Sometimes I have to perform during the day for festivals, and my music does not work in the daytime. It is nighttime music.

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

So many girls come up and say to me, ‚I have never listened to country music in my life. I didn’t even know my town had a country-music station. Then I got your record, and now I’m obsessed.‘ That’s the coolest compliment to me.

I have never used Auto-Tune in a live television performance, and I have never used Auto-Tune in any of my concerts. That is a promise.

My grandfather once ventured upon publishing a volume of hymns. I never heard anyone speak in their favour or argue that they ought to have been sung in the congregation. In that volume, he promised a second if the first should prove acceptable. We forgive him the first collection because he did not inflict another.

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

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.

I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.

There weren’t a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn’t have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends.

The only frustrating thing about jail is that I can’t make music.

If I was just a fan of music, I would think that I was the number one artist in the world.

Once music ceases to be ephemeral – always disappearing – and becomes instead material… it leaves the condition of traditional music and enters the condition of painting. It becomes a painting, existing as material in space, not immaterial in time.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.

I used to sing songs and write with my uncle, Bill Owens.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

Some people are making music just for numbers and views.

Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don’t fit in a very interesting way.

Latin music is universal.

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. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

I do seem to like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

My entire childhood was steeped in poverty. For me, poverty, in a way, was the first inspiration of my life, a commitment to do something for the poor.

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

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

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.

I grew up as this very carefree, happy kid then things turned darker for me. Maybe it was because I saw that the world wasn’t as happy a place as I had hoped it would be for me.

Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss.

Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.

From the time that ‚Nevermind‘ came out in September of 1991 to the time that Nirvana was over, it was really just a few years, and a lot happened in those few years.

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.

When I was growing up, I wasn’t an extrovert. If anything, I was an introverted kid and a very average pupil at school. I was very quiet.

Everyone I look up to is bringing me into the tech world. You’d be surprised by all the music people in it, invested in it.

Honestly, I’d love to be remembered as one of the best to ever pick up a mic, but if I’m doing my part to lessen some racial tension I feel good about what I’m doing.

I’ve got my Grammys on top of my piano and I look at them when I play.

We don’t make music – it makes us.

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

Sing me a new song; the world is transfigured; all the Heavens are rejoicing.

I grew up on the Beatles; I love Linkin Park and Green Day. I heard hip-hop for the first time at 11 and realized what I was missing.

I never wanted to look pretty on stage and sing about something we’ve all heard about before.

You know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap – and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and ‚Heart Shaped Box‘ and stuff on ‚In Utero‘ just happened that way.