Quotes from Mike Posner

When you're a writer, your song has to resonate with the person you're writing for in order for them to want to sing it. But if you're an artist, you can sing whatever you want.

I didn't give myself enough love, so I was searching for it in other places, and it was a never ending struggle.

I realized that a lot of people in my family had sacrificed for me to have the opportunity to go to a place like Duke. I owed it to them to finish. I graduated with a 3.6.

There was a time when being loaded and loved and popular really mattered a lot to me. I'd say that when I was less popular, I learned to be happy without those things.

I try to listen to as much different music as possible - I've always got music blasting in my ears!

I think I was blessed with this talent for a reason. No one told me how to write a song, but I'm just good at it, you know. There are a lot of other things in my life that I'm not so good at, but writing a song is not one of them.

If a song about blowing your shot becomes popular, that's really funny.

I looked at myself and realized I had a lot of boundaries up about what I would talk about, what was private for me and what wasn't. I decided to just get rid of them. It was quite liberating.

I feel super, super grateful that I get to make music.

When I started picking out music for myself, I was a hip-hop kid. DMX, The Roots, Outkast, people like that.

I believe in the ethos of the remix, like Andy Warhol making a painting of a Campbell's soup label.

I cared too much about people liking me because I didn't like myself enough.

I remember being 24 in Los Angeles. And up until that moment, when my mom would call my cell phone and it would ring, I would be flushed with some sort of excitement that we all have - a little dopamine rush, when my phone rings - and I'd look down, and it would say, 'Mom.' It used to feel like a job to pick that up.

It's easier to make art for a society at a certain point in time with an understanding of what's going on.

Avicii's been a supporter of my music for years, and we've been writing songs together for a long time.

It's not the job of the art to accommodate me and make me more money, make me more famous and get me more girls.

I had an initial wave of popularity that, in time, crashed, and I slowly became less popular and less successful, and I had to figure out who I was without those things.

Honestly, I don't go to clubs very often.

I think of the pop music that I've made in the past and hear on the radio as candy bars. And I was really good at making candy bars.

From what I understand about Shakespeare - which isn't a lot - there was no copyright law when he was writing. He sampled at will, and it wasn't seen as a bad thing.

I'm a big fan of country music.

I've only had success when I'm not trying to. It's that weird thing where if you're trying to impress a girl, you're not going to impress her. But if you aren't trying to impress a girl, you'll probably impress her because you're not trying.

My focus is to try to appreciate the present moment more and more and more.

Detroit is in my music consciously and subconsciously.