Diplomacy is listening to what the other guy needs. Preserving your own position, but listening to the other guy. You have to develop relationships with other people so when the tough times come, you can work together.

There is as much wisdom in listening as there is in speaking - and that goes for all relationships, not just romantic ones.

That's basically all my act is - it's just listening all the time and watching for what people do with their hands and so on. It gets on people's nerves a bit - especially when you're at a wedding and you're scribbling on a table and they go 'stop doing that' and you go 'I can't.'

Trust your instincts: they tend to see you right. By listening to them, at least you can sleep at night.

There are days when I intentionally don't write. For instance, I never write when I'm traveling, because travel is a situation where I can learn more by looking and listening than by working.

It was a free-for-all with music when I was growing up. My mother was a huge music fanatic so I was listening to everything from country to heavy metal to Indigo Girls to Elton John. I guess when I was really young I didn't like Willie Nelson, and she obviously loved him. Now I do too, I'm so thankful to her for playing his music nonstop.

Golf is about knowledge, and studying another player - more than listening to a teacher - is the best way to get it.

We've finally told the world that this is sports entertainment, and I think one of the best forms of entertainment is anything that's fun or funny, something that you really enjoy watching or listening to.

Spending most of my time on chess there is not much else I can be much good at but I enjoy spending time with my wife, parents, siblings and friends, listening to music, some sports, the Web and well... the usual stuff.

I grew up in New Mexico, and the older I get, I have less need for contemporary culture and big cities and all the stuff we are bombarded with. I am happier at my ranch in the middle of nowhere watching a bug carry leaves across the grass, listening to silence, riding my horse, and being in open space.

To me, the only way we'll see a collective change in this country is by listening to people who have experienced life in the margins of society, who have lived less privileged versions of my story, in systemic poverty and facing structural racism.

When I've had to edit my albums, I'll listen to it one time through, and I'll make edits. I want to remember to set up a camera to record myself listening to my set, because I don't even slightly crack a smile, I am just listening for technical details, and I look like somebody that has absolutely no sense of humor. I look insane.

Each one of us can do a good deed, every day and everywhere. In hospitals in desperate need of volunteers, in homes for the elderly where our parents and grandparents are longing for a smile, a listening ear, in the street, in our workplaces and especially at home.

From a very young age, music was very much in my house. I would sit with my mom, with the old LPs, listening to The Beatles and Carly Simon and Lionel Richie. The old LPs used to have the lyrics. From there, I would put on dance and music displays for my family, just to entertain them and make people laugh and smile.

I'm naturally sort of a sad person, and that comes out in my music, but when I realized how many people were listening to it... I wanted to be a little more conscious about what I was putting out and what people were going to be taking from it.

One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.

There should be no boundaries in your relationship with sound. Often it's not about the music itself but the context in which you hear the music. For instance, listening to a piece of classical music in a film you love often changes your perception of it entirely.

Ears are made not for hearing but for listening. Listening is an active skill, whereas hearing is passive. Listening is something that we have to work at - it's a relationship with sound. And yet, it's a skill that none of us are taught.

I love writing songs. I love doing my radio show and talking to the fans and listening to what they have to say, but there's a certain responsibility that comes along with being given the gift of music. I take that seriously, but at the same time I try to use it to do something that makes a difference in a positive way.

Just imagine, the thousands and thousands of concerts that take place every single day, all over the world. And the positive effect that they would have on the people listening. Now imagine a world without this. This void... it is unthinkable.

I used to be locked up in my bedroom for hours, just listening to music, making some of my own, doodling and writing poetry.

Listeners are kind of ambushed... if a poem just happens to be said when they're listening to the radio. The listener doesn't have time to deploy what I call their 'poetry deflector shields' that were installed in high school - there's little time to resist the poem.

Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.

Human beings love poetry. They don't even know it sometimes... whether they're the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber... they're listening to poetry.