I didn't start making music in order to be famous.

Making music is a lifestyle; go to the studio and sit in front of your computer, drum machine or guitar for 10 hours a day. The good stuff will come.

I used to be a serious sneaker addict, but I've moved on a little bit from those days.

The cologne you pick should make you feel good when you go out with it. I think confidence comes across more than any other of our attributes.

I don't have a crazy rider clause saying I have to stay at fancy hotels. I don't have a problem with staying at a Marriott. But I will admit that I've gotten just basic, regular service there.

I had a somewhat frenetic childhood because my mum and dad split up when I was five, and then my mum remarried.

My mother was pretty strict. I hated it, but maybe it made me a bit more sensible.

I never studied jazz technically; I just know and love the music.

I really love something about being around the recording studios - you know, like, those days in the '80s they'd be, like, in the studio 'til 4, 5, 6 in the morning working on these songs.

D'Angelo could sing the phonebook and it would sound good.

I rarely ever respond to misquotes and wrong information. Plus, it only serves to bring attention to the matter.

I never want to see umbrellas around me." he [Mussolini] once said. "The umbrella is a bourgeois relic, it is the arm used by the pope's soldiers. A people who carry umbrellas cannot found an empire.

You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.

I used to make up stuff in my bio all the time, that I used to be a professional ice-skater and stuff like that. I found it so inspirational. Why not make myself cooler than I am?

You don't kill your way to peace.

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.

The idea of connecting all people to knowledge and each other is enduring

I am passionate about informing the world about our ocean - its complexity and beauty, its value to us, and the perils that it faces.

Rage was sometimes a useful ally in the heat of a fight, but it was a trickster. It made everything seem possible.

To be of mixed blood is a great gift for a writer. I have one foot on tribal lands and one foot in middle-class life.

Dreamland is a book, but it's my song in book form. It's translated itself into a different medium.