Almost everything that gets called "universal truth" or "common sense" is actually cultural. And too easily twisted into justifications for all kinds of behavior.

I try not to think about the drums themselves. If I do, I'll end up hitting myself in the head with a drumstick, or sustaining some weird injury.

I'm a rock-and-roll drummer, so my job is to create chaos.

I have music in my head; I can't help it. You can put a gun to my head and it's not going to go away. The privilege is that I'm not being prevented from following that.

I'm not unswayed by the opinions of others. I actually really value that, the idea that you can feel things the way somebody else might feel them is a really big part of doing music for me.

What most people call "chaos" is actually incredibly predictable and maddeningly boring - greed, close-mindedness, warring over power.

There's part of me that feels a privilege not to do music, but to do what everybody should be allowed to do, which is to do what you're driven to do.

It's weird to me to even say, "I wrote this song." I never feel like I wrote it; I feel like I heard it.

I've found that writing and playing music has so little to do with will, and so much to do with just finding what's there waiting for you.

It's very heartening to see people who I used to do music with still doing it.

That's one of the things that always grabbed me about rock music: There's a song, and you know how it goes, and you can sort of predict it, but a lot is left up to chance and interaction.

Intersections are crash magnets.

One does not suffer nearly so much from one's inadequacies as from one's unused abilities.

Nana used to say whenever you start feeling like the world is taking a bite out of you, bite back by counting your blessings.

Yoga in Mayfair or Fifth Avenue, or in any other place which is on the telephone, is a spiritual fake.

Poverty has strange bedfellows.

I make movies just as painters paint: I work where I can.

Usually, I take a hike for a while after submitting a column to Townhall. Too much of my insensitivity can cause emotional problems among proggies, and I am, after all, a compassionate man.

Let deeds correspond with words. [Lat., Dictis facta suppetant.]

And I do believe that the way to change a society, to uplift people - not just their spirit, but to uplift their society and economic base - is through education.

I love Westerns. I really love John Wayne. Frank Capra, any of his movies I love.