All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.

I’ve always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks – you learn craft, you learn structure, all that – as you go.

I think ‚Hail to the Chief‘ has a nice ring to it.

The Heads were the only band on that scene that had a groove.

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.

I made an album I’m very proud of, and that’s about it.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

Together with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification. To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport.

It was something I never expected to – I never expected the book would sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers.

I’m the same kid who used to hop the trains with headphones and just go to downtown Manhattan, walk around and listen to music or walk through the city. The fame restricts that. It’s a small complaint in comparison to the benefits I get from it, but the restrictive part is what I don’t like – and the fact that it’s not reversible.

Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere.

A ‚scream‘ is always just that – a noise and not music.

America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

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.

I use my celebrity status to inspire someone, to give them hope.

I got to Africa. I got the opportunity to go and learn, not about any animal, but chimpanzees. I was living in my dream world, the forest in Gombe National Park in Tanzania. It was Tanganyika when I began.

I listen to my old records and I think, ‚How did I ever get on the radio?‘

I have been on the road and visited numerous places and met people from all over the globe. I can say that it looks nearly the same everywhere I have been: The climate crisis is ignored by people in charge, despite the science being crystal clear.

I used to consider the listener. But now I’m in a space where, if I’m not inspired, I can’t really do the music. I can’t feel it.

When you think of the exponential speed and scale of expansion of social media or a service, you have to believe that it is equally possible to rapidly transform the lives of those who have long stood on the margins of hope.

Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

I listen to music that is of our time and I just get angry.

The jazz I love is sweet and pure with raw elements, which is exactly what the good hip-hop is doing now.

It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.

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.

As a teenager, I went to Bali a lot, but it’s a long, long way from England. Which is why, when we bought Necker Island, we made it like a mini Bali.

Everyone my age probably grew up listening to the ‚perreos‘ of Plan B.

I can play a lot of different instruments adequately but nothing really well.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

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.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.

I’m wallowing in the whole idea of just being a guy out there with a band, with songs. It’s a real enjoyment.

‚In Utero‘ was the first time I’d made an album that reached into the dark side. I remember the conflict and the uncertainty. I remember all those things when I hear ‚Pennyroyal Tea.‘

Touring is very routine. You get to the city, you go to the hotel, you got to be at the hotel by a certain time – it’s very routine. I’m not a very structured person, so when I get some structure, it’s cool; it’s good for me.

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

Every day, my mom and I would watch a different Judy Garland VHS. I love how she tells a story when she sings. It was just about her voice and the words she was singing – no strings attached or silly hair or costumes, just a woman singing her heart out. I feel like that doesn’t happen that much anymore.

In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

So there’s no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn’t necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn’t necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

When I won the first Grammy, there was no other feeling like that feeling. It just made me feel like I came so far, like that was just a dream a few years before that, and then it was happening right then.

Just got back from a pleasure trip: I took my mother-in-law to the airport.

My mother had bought a sewing machine for me. When I went away to college, she gave me a sewing machine, a typewriter and a suitcase, and my mother made $17 a week working as a maid 12 hours a day, and she did that for me.

Wherever you go, go with all your heart.

I want you to feel happy and enjoy the theatre of my life the way that I do. No matter what happens with my music and wherever I go – that heart of that glamorous girl in New York will never be gone.

Once you’ve changed who you are or who you’ve portrayed in your music, the fans, they’ll catch it… Once I feel like the world knows me for anything else but my music, then I feel like I failed.

I love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

We should not moor a ship with one anchor, or our life with one hope.

I’ve grown accustomed to hotels and drastic climate change.

I mean, Hawaii is beautiful, but the world is full of beautiful places.

Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature’s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

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.

I want my fans to love themselves. It’s almost like I want to hypnotize them so when they hear my music they love themselves instantly.

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that’s pretty much all you can ask.

If it weren’t for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.

The boys know they’re from Southeast Asia, and they have their food and their music and their friends, and they have a pride particular to them.