Zappa was very technical and impressed by things that were musically challenging – weird time signatures, strange keys, awkward chord sequences. Zappa was important to me as an example of everything I didn’t want to do. I’m very grateful to him, actually.

While musical experts of the world focus on what choir members can do, I would like to focus on what choir members can be.

I’ve been on tour since I was 16, and I always do meet-and-greets before and after shows, so you kind of build these friendships with people. I have girls come up to me and tell me exactly what’s going on in their love lives.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

People tried to change my concept of what music is. That music is work, but it’s not like that.

I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.

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.

The secret is not to give up hope. It’s very hard not to because if you’re really doing something worthwhile I think you will be pushed to the brink of hopelessness before you come through the other side.

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

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.

My music seems to have a bigger mission than I have, which is very soothing but also very strange because people see more in me than I see, which can be terrifying.

I’ve been really, really fortunate.

It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.

We represent a hustler. I think we represent inspiration. I think we represent, you know, staying down. I think we represent building yourself up from the bootstraps.

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us thru that darkness to a safe and sane future.

I modelled my looks on the town tramp.

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.

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

When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that’s not something I could do.

Giving is true having.

It is through gratitude for the present moment that the spiritual dimension of life opens up.

You go to a festival, you know you’re not going to play all new material at a festival. The audience is not there for that. I’ve made that mistake, but you find out pretty quickly.

Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.

Man, I’m the No. 1 living and breathing rock star. I am Axl Rose; I am Jim Morrison; I am Jimi Hendrix.

When I write, I write about my surroundings. Sometimes it’s light, and sometimes it gets very dark.

I love being American, and I love family. I love having a family, and I feel so blessed, and I feel like God gave me exactly what I wanted, so now I have to do the right thing in God’s eyes also. Just follow what God wants me to do.

My mother was and will always remain my greatest hero.

Fortunately, we have help from the media. I have to say this: I’m very grateful for the support and kindness that we’ve gotten. People have respected their privacy and in that way, I think, you know, no matter what people may feel about my husband’s policies or what have you, they care about children and that’s been good to see.

It’s so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.

When someone bestows something on you, no matter how true it is, when someone says, ‚Sexiest Man Alive,‘ I’m honestly going, ‚Thank you. Right on.‘ For me, it’s never canceled out anything, it’s never made me go, ‚Does this make me less talented of an actor?‘

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

Most people return small favors, acknowledge medium ones and repay greater ones – with ingratitude.

I believe in singing to such an extent that, if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing becomes a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for cooperation with others.

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

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.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

I really appreciate the moments that I was able to win rap album of the year or whatever.

I have a very eclectic iPod. So I’ve got my cardio people – so it’s anything from Beyonce to some Jay-Z to Janelle Monae, her song ‚Tightrope,‘ that’s a good cardio song. And then I’ve got Sting. I’ve got Mary J. Blige. I’ve got The Beatles. I’ve got Michael Jackson. I try to pick the songs that I personally love.

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

People – especially white people – they want me to be a role model just because of the life I lead. The things I say in my songs, they expect it of me.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I’d written? Yes. There’s many of them!

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.

There’s something missing in the music industry today… and it’s music. Songs you hear don’t last, it’s just product fed to you by the industry.

How I love David Bowie.

I liberate minds with my music. That’s more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.

U2 is an original species… there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.

With music, you often don’t have to translate it. It just affects you, and you don’t know why.

I’ve been in the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus since I was 8.

I always wanted to operate at the highest altitude, just in terms of hip-hop and the music.

The goal for me is always to have the opportunity to work in different genres. This is a great and exciting time in my career, where I can have the opportunity to work in different genres, and also I recognize there’s not a lot of actors who have that opportunity and I’m grateful for it.

There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.

Cage Warriors is a brilliant organisation. They’re doing great things for European MMA, and they’re giving the platform for guys like me who came through. They’re vital. I’m forever grateful for the opportunities I got.

I thank God for my failures. Maybe not at the time but after some reflection. I never feel like a failure just because something I tried has failed.

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow’s nest of that ship.