Well, what's interesting, I try not to think about the radio when I'm writing a song. I want people to love the song, and that means it might not be exactly thinking about the radio, but it's thinking about your audience and saying, 'I want people to like this song after it's done.'

There are autobiographical elements to the albums, and when I write, I always reference my own life as well as other things, so I'm just like any novelist or any fiction writer who tells stories.

I was a busy kid in high school - a little bit of an overachiever, I guess. Prom king was kind of silly, but the rest of the stuff was important to me.

Some people start with the lyrics first because they know what they want to talk about and they just write a whole bunch of lyrical ideas, but for me the music tells me what to talk about.

My first attempt at a kiss was in fifth grade, but it didn't go so well. Later, I used Boyz II Men and Jodeci songs to come on to girls. I had more success.

John legend is a nickname that somebody started calling me a while ago and part of it is 'cos I sound like an old man when I sing.

For me as a songwriter, I love when other people cover my songs.

I've always had an interest in story-telling and history and just film and art in general, but particularly when it comes to storytelling, I think the reason why we became involved in film is because we wanted to get some great stories out there.

Hip-hop is one of the most free art forms there is. There's so many sounds you can use, so many things you can bring in. You never know, man. I bet years ago people would've never said they would hear me with Rick Ross, and we did four classic songs together.

Dr. King was unpopular while he was alive - he's only popular now because he's dead and not a threat to anyone.

My fried chicken is very simple. I pan-fry it in a skillet.

I know how it feels to be a singer who wants to get discovered.

There's a certain confidence that comes with being sure about the way the world works.

Before every show, I eat half a rotisserie chicken.

I've fundraised for Hillary, and I'll be voting for her. I don't think we should be electing Donald Trump as president, and I'm supportive of Hillary's campaign.

I always saw myself as a singer-songwriter, a solo-artist, that's why working with other artists was never satisfying for me.

I'm trying to be me and embrace all the parts of me that have grown up, listened to more music and soaked up more influences.

I don't feel like that many musicians are competitive with each other.

My dad liked a lot of Motown, but I didn't listen to it until my teenage years.

Artists are, I think in general, compassionate people, and part of what makes us artists is that we're open-minded people, and I think we're almost, by definition, progressive in a lot of ways.

Trump's been a public personality forever, and that's fine if you want him to be a reality-TV host, but if you want him to be president, there's a different standard.

The best training is to play by ear: trial by fire.

I studied African American studies, and I read these slave narratives and the escape narratives of people that were able to escape slavery and always found those stories intriguing and powerful and inspiring.

I always felt that rap didn't cause crime; it just reflected it.

Obviously, Kanye and I are very different in the way we express ourselves publicly. He's so passionate... about art, about culture, about creativity. And he's really good at it. And that honesty manifests itself in ways that are not politically correct, not socially acceptable sometimes.

When we meet people who are astronauts or deal in astronomy, it's always really fascinating.

Time sneaks up on you like a windshield on a bug.

When good things come along, you end up saying yes to them. Because they're rare.

Britain is probably the most sophisticated combination of a monarchy and a democracy.

Take care, be kind, be considerate of other people and other species, and be loving.

I look around, and 50 percent of the big-budget entertainment you are seeing these days is dystopian. This is the era of 'Hunger Games' and blasted landscapes and 'The Walking Dead.'

Britain has a great sense of its own national pride. It's like the monarchy is the embodiment of that pride.

Oh, I'm dying to play Donald Trump someday, just because he's an unbelievable character. I'm a character actor; that's what you look for: outsized human beings.

What fascinated me most was Churchill as a young child. He had a kind of Dickensian childhood. The neglect. And he was a terrible student. His whole life is a study in trying to overcome your feelings of inadequacy.

My wife is a professor at UCLA in Los Angeles, but otherwise, I'd be right back living on the Upper West Side.

I won two Golden Globes, and there was a long, long period in between the wins. That might be explained by the fact that when I first won the award, for '3rd Rock on the Sun,' I satirically compared aliens on the show to the Foreign Press Association. And they did not take that well.

It's a delightful thing to do, to entertain kids. They're a completely different audience because of their total lack of irony. You're always after a total suspension of disbelief, but the only people you can really achieve it with is children.

I auditioned for soap operas and commercials; I remember auditioning for Lays potato chips. It was a sort of 'Mutiny on the Bounty' sketch, where Captain Bligh was torturing the crew by saying, 'You can only have one Lays potato chip,' and they all rise up.

Powerful people are always in charge. You have to acknowledge that and deal with it as a reality. They're not devils. They're not monsters. They're human beings, like us, that have their share of insecurities and fears. You have to contemplate that as you go through life.

The Broadway audience is made up of a greater percentage of tourists now. There's not nearly as much variety and danger and challenge in what's being offered.

I am a storyteller, and the stories I tell are, when I'm lucky, really good ones. It's a very exciting thing to do with your life, and that's, I think, what keeps me hopeful.

Academics tend to have wonderfully infantile senses of humor.

I grew up with this crazy upbringing of living many places and always being the new kid in town, not like a service brat where you're always going to school with other new kids in town. I was constantly arriving in small towns and going to school with kids who'd been together since they were in kindergarten.

'Love Is Strange' was just a beautiful experience in so many ways.

It's a very tough time for the playwright. Broadway has become almost a musical comedy theme park with all these long-running shows.

I loved growing up in Ohio.

No villain thinks of himself as a villain, and that's the approach I always take.

Good acting is really excellent carpentry.

Whenever I play a role, it's like I've been kidnapped inside my own body.

Churchill faced his own diminishing capabilities and increasing irrelevance by maintaining the sense that he was the only one who could solve whatever problem was before him. He was very often wrong, of course, but then he had spent so much of his life overcoming appalling mistakes, disasters, and rejections.