In music, the punctuation is absolutely strict, the bars and rests are absolutely defined. But our punctuation cannot be quite strict, because we have to relate it to the audience. In other words we are continually changing the score.

Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism.

My music is homegrown from the garden of New Orleans. Music is everything to me short of breathing. Music also has a role to lift you up - not to be escapist but to take you out of misery.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

I worked with Jack Nitzsche for 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' and we'd booked a symphony orchestra. He dismissed them and came with a little man who poured water into glasses of different sizes to make a glass harmonica. And most of the music for the film was that - with some Indian flutes and some drums.

I find that it isn't wise to attempt to judge people on their public persona, and even on the music they make. Because I've met so many people whose music I cannot stand, and they're very nice. At the same time, I've met people whose music I've loved, and they're not the person you've invested all this emotion in.

I always wanted to be more of a person that people enjoy. Somebody that will make you laugh. I'm talking about just my personality, not necessarily how my music sounds.

There's such a currency to Led Zeppelin, or the members of Led Zeppelin. If I put it to you this way, on the run-up to the O2 concert, the only music that we played was music of Led Zeppelin - the past catalog stuff; that's what we played on the way towards shaping up the set list for that. But we played really, really well.

Yes, there are times when I get extremely depressed and how I sublimate those feelings is through music.

A lot of people from my generation of music are so focused on playing things correctly or to perfection that they're stuck in that safe place.

I was always struck by how Picasso had no interest in music.

Everything revolves around the music when it comes to Tool.

I run with music all the time. I cannot run without my iPod. I have everything. Teddy Pendergrass. Luther Van Dross. Michael Jackson. Outkast. If an Usher song comes on and it's fast, I go fast.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Grammys because I don't see the music world as a competitive sport.

My music had roots which I'd dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil.

Music is my life, professionally, for nearly 60 years. To be recognized by the academy is still the highest honor.

If I know you're very good in music, I can predict with just about zero accuracy whether you're going to be good or bad in other things.

My ambition is to further create a signature sound, a signature spirit, that makes some kind of contribution to music in general.

You don't necessarily pick the singles that you want when you're making a record, but for the most part it's the same process. You're the artist - you make the music that you want to make.

Music's always been a huge part of my life, and my first record came out in 1981.

People called rock & roll 'African music.' They called it 'voodoo music.' They said that it would drive the kids insane. They said that it was just a flash in the pan - the same thing that they always used to say about hip-hop.

I'll always be into sports. Sports is part of my life forever. My TV stays on ESPN all day long, I'm one of those. I don't even listen to music in the car; all I listen to is sports talk.

We definitely work hard, and we want to keep our fans engaged... we want to give them new music.

When we did Diplomats music, it was all genuine, and I think that's why people love it so much, because they seen a group of kids from Harlem that had almost nothing come up to be platinum-selling artists, and people rode that wave with us.

When I'm writing music, I'm not playing a character. I'm not Alice Cooper or Gene Simmons or someone like that, who has acknowledged that they are writing music for a character.

We don't make music - it makes us.

People think I take some sort of masochistic pleasure out of putting out music that's gonna be unpopular.

Music is for dreamers, I think.

People love events - they love performances, they love music - and I think Australians are great entertainers.

If I wake up one day and people tell me I'm not sexy, I'm not going to stop making good music and having fun. That 'sex symbol' thing is typically part of being in the limelight. You better be very talented in your music, but it's good to be nice to look at, I guess.

Music's been a huge passion of mine since I was really young. I started playing guitar when I was thirteen.

Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts - as the one which, more than any other, ministers to the human spirit.

I'm not really involved with politics... I'm living in my cocoon with my classical music around.

I feel like people either love me or hate me, which is good, because that was the point of what I do. The point of M.I.A. is to be - it's either to be loved or hated. At least you evoke that much of a strong opinion about music.

When you're in Jamaica, unless you're in a tourist spot, you don't hear Bob Marley; you mostly hear dance hall music.

When people ask me if I have a hobby, a lot of times my answer is that I like to surf in warm water. I like to ski, if I have the opportunity. But really, I like to go to my studio and write music that I want to write, where there's no pressure to come up with a hit single.

There's always a spattering of people who see Hanson who were influenced by classic '60's and '70's rock and roll. In a lot of ways, we're sort of the anatomy of a '70's rock band if you examine what we do: white guys who grew up listening to soul music from the '50's and '60's.

My father was a minister and so rock music was banned in our house.

Music at times is more like perfume than mathematics.

But however measurable, there is much more life in music than mathematics or logic ever dreamed of.

My favorite music isn't necessarily the songs that One Direction come out with. That doesn't mean to say I don't secretly really love some of our songs, which I do. My personal tastes... I actually like quite a bit acoustic and more mellow kinds of things.

I hope people describe my music as lyrically driven, cross genre. Kind of alternative, kind of indie, kind of rap, kind of everything.

When music fails to agree to the ear, to soothe the ear and the heart and the senses, then it has missed the point.

Every human being in this world is interested in certain things. Everybody has a hobby. Some people like art; I know nothing about it. Some people like books, some people like fishing, some people like music. I like to look at cars.

The music that I hate the most is R&B.

Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.

For me, every music video is a hurdle. Every time I do a music video, I'm constantly fighting to get my point across. As a gay woman, that's also a big hurdle.

I've got all of the old school vinyls from the '70s - even further back, like the jazz music in the '40s, '50s, '60s. Then I've got all the '80s stuff underground, hip-hop when hip-hop really first started. The '90s stuff. All of the good stuff, because I'm really into music, and it helps me create new songs now.

I used to go to the Church of the Harvest, right off Adams and La Brea. There was a pastor there who had the best big choir and the best band. He would start praying, and the music would start playing and just make people feel so good, you could break out of whatever you were going through. Soft music can have that effect, too.

African-American music tends to have, at the very least, a glimmer of hope to it - sometimes full-fledged hope.