I just encourage everyone to make real music and it will fuel the engine and the machine. Just make it real and put your heart into it. Don't make it because you heard someone on the radio.

I believe in the synergy and sharing platforms.

I'm usually writing or producing for other people. I'm like Burger King most of the time; I let people have it their way like "You want it like this? I'll give it to you like this."

Prince didn't want to sound like Michael Jackson. Neither of them wanted to sound like Luther Vandross. They didn't want to sound like David Bowie. They were all different, but brilliant.

People are getting record deals and they can barely sing. We have these new terms for artists that can dance, but they can't sing.

The major labels, they roll with whatever is making money. I don't know if R&B turned into making banjo music and it sounded like blue grass, they'll buy it if it's selling.

I think when the music and the product is amazing, people buy it.

If you're going to be called a musicianship, you have to be able to play.

I want to make music that I know that ten years from now, you can put it on and say "This is a great record".

The one thing I always loved about Michael Jackson: he had fun records, but he's also going to make some important statement with the music as well. He's not going to forsake the culture.

You can't say that people don't love music anymore because they do. If we say that all the music stopped, if music stops now, the world can't handle that. We need our music.

WORDS HAVE NO EXPIRATION DATE

I can be patient, Vivienne, and I believe you’re worth waiting for.

He knows I’ve seen something in him. Something I recognize, only because it exists in me too.

Yes, rules are made to be broken -- but ONLY if you have a damn good reason for doing it.

There's a thin, blurry line between humor and tragedy.

We talk often about being in a media-saturated society, and we are surrounded by image streams. But it's nihilistic. There's a real randomness to all of it.

How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos.

All the best times in music were rebellious. I mean, even like Elvis, people didn't want their daughters paying attention to him. He was considered too sexual!

I think serious situations actually make for the best kind of belly laughs. But theyre also the hardest to convert into comedy at the outset.

The less literate are the first to fail and drop out of school.