But I'm someone who the more afraid I am, the more I want to do it to get the fear over with.

The business today is completely different and it's very producer driven, so that a songwriter needs to have producing chops, be a singer, songwriter, or find a singer to develop.

Sharing a triumph with someone you love is an incredible high.

My nature is to be linear, and when I'm not, I feel really proud of myself.

You made a lot of mistakes, and you wrote a lot of crap. But it was all part of the learning process.

We wrote what sounded good to us and hoped it would find a home.

That's what it is every time you walk into the room to write with someone new. It's like, oh god I have to take my clothes off 'my creative clothes' and let them see all of my flaws.

You just have to believe in yourself when you've got something, and just keep pounding on the door, because if you pound long enough, somebody is going to open it.

I wanted to write for Broadway.

That first writing session, what Dan Hill calls a creative blind date, is always a real challenge, and you bring that back to your partner when you return to writing with them.

We have gone through some difficult times like everyone else and perhaps our working together and respecting each other's abilities, in addition to that little thing called love, helped us survive.

I used to have all of my ducks in a row. Now I'm happy to just have them in my vicinity.

There seems almost a general wish of descrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.

I attribute my good fortune to the simple fact that I have always tried to write straight from my own heart to the hearts of others.

The American indie underground made music for like-minded people who thought for themselves. Thinking for yourself is intrinsically subversive.

Eighteen is a terrible age, and while I walked around with the conviction that I was somehow more grown-up than my classmates, the truth was that I had merely found a different way of being young.

The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art.

For there to be an expense, there must be income somewhere else

I know why we're here. We're all here because we're not all there.

This is how we loosen up for the morning announcements. Whoever has the football when the bell rings loses.

Life is all about learning and one of the most memorable ways of learning something is by messing up.