During the lifetime of Japan I became very neurotic, very paranoid.

It wasn't my natural inclination to get into writing protest songs.

Zen Buddhism is a discipline where belief isn't necessary.

Sometimes a little compromise isn't a bad thing. You don't need to be precious about it.

The public so often want to freeze the artist in a moment in time when they were at their peak, and they want the artist to revisit it over and over again as if it was something authentic.

I like to explore a lot of textural, arrangement aspects in the studio.

I don't listen to a lot of music any more and even the people I've loved for years - the Nick Drakes of this world - I can't go back to them and listen to them over and over.

Creating a decent pop song is a challenge - and occasionally, once in every decade - it's kind of fun to do that.

I'm obsessed with books.

I knew that I had to find my own voice, both figuratively and literally.

If rape or arson, poison or the knifeHas wove no pleasing patterns in the stuffOf this drab canvas we accept as life -It is because we are not bold enough!

To be brave, you have to fight against something that scares you. That's the rule.

Yes, I am white now, ' said Gandalf. 'Indeed I am Saruman, one might almost say, Saruman as he should have been.

Children are forced to live very rapidly in order to live at all. They are given only a few years in which to learn hundreds of thousands of things about life and the planet and themselves.

Haitians don't like to say they are hungry because we are proud.

It was sometimes provoked by assignments, then I'd go back on my own dime if I really clicked with a place. And sometimes it was just hanging out with my family or friends.

The vices of idleness are only to be shaken off by active employment.

[I'll teach you] how not to leave the windows of your heart open when it looks like rain and how everyone has a stump where something necessary was amputated.

The better we are at accepting the limits of our world, the more easily we can embrace what we have.

It's probably true that everyone has a book in them, although it may not be a very good one.