“I actually only started listening to house music around the time I started making it. I got hooked both to making music and to house music.”

House music originated in America, and it has always been around, but I guess it just got a tighter hold on Europe and other parts of the world.

If I wanted to make a quick buck, there’s far easier ways of doing it. What I want is to provoke people. If you want a hit song, all you need to do is rewrite an old song. It might have been proven to work, but you won’t be remembered the same way.

I travel with a bunch of battery packs because I don’t always have time to charge my phone at the hotel room when I’m traveling. I always change them, so I never run out of battery.

I have always been mainstream. It’s so weird, because I don’t see it as something negative at all. So many people see it as something negative.

I always just sit down at the piano and make the main hook—what I want the track to be about melodically—and then I’ll build everything else around that. But growing up, I did not play any instruments.

I’ve always had a fascination with making your own music but never have been skilled enough to play the instrument, so to be able to make music without the ability was awesome.

It’s hard – some people get inspired by a feeling, but I’m mostly inspired by melodies.

To me, I’m always trying to look for the energy, to imagine in being played on the dance floor. I guess that’s the most important thing in making music for me.

I have a hard time writing music when I’m on tour.

Life’s a game made for everyone, and love is the prize.

There’s always haters, no matter what you’re doing – whether they’re complaining that everything you do sounds the same, or it’s too different.

I think I am a pretty good judge of character in general and try to surround myself with the best people I can.

I tried carrying the weight of the world. But I only have two hands.

I grew up listening to a lot of Ray Charles and ’60s rock, thanks to my father, and then my brothers got me in to KISS and whatnot, so I guess that’s where I got my first taste for music.

When I started working on electronic music, that was after the rave period. I haven’t even seen that part of it that much.

When it comes to electronic music, I started listening to a lot of Daft Punk, way before I knew what house music was, and then progressed into a lot of Steve Angello, Eric Prydz, Axwell, Sebastian Ingrosso, and Laidback Luke.

Had I listened to my agent, I’d be running around in tights, climbing buildings and stuff.

Be wary of listening to stories secondhand.

People will listen to a song and expect that you just have that persona on all the time. But really, that was your one outlet that one day to get that emotion out. The only difference was you put it on a canvas that’s going to be there forever.

People listened to Farsi texts, and to the great texts of our Baba Bulleh Shah, Khwaja Ghulam Farid, Mian Mohammad Bakhsh Jehlmi. People do listen to it these days, but much less than in those days.

I did everything. I ran my life exactly as I wanted to, all the time. I never listened to anybody. I’m pig-headed.

I make it a point to listen to a song before being a part of it to ensure that there is nothing offensive or downgrading.

All of us talk faster than we listen.

Trusting the government to monitor your calls without listening. It’s kind of like trusting Chris Christie to pick up the McDonald’s and not eat the fries on the way home.