Everybody's out trying to be commercial. I'm not trying to be anything, really.

The first time I met Patti Smith was in a laundromat. We knew some of the same people, including Richard Hell.

I just don't like people coming up to me and saying something. It immediately makes you become insincere. There is no way you can react to it sincerely.

When I think of 'influence', I think of 'influenza', like somebody's picked up a germ.

The song Venus de Milo, the whole subject of it is Love is a drug.

I never liked mellow sounding guitar.

You can't get so interested in just making sounds. The point of it all is some kind of expression.

Practice? I never practice. I just write songs and take solos.

I like thinking of myself as invisible. I find it a very advantageous way to live.

When somebody turned me on to a Coltrane record around seventh grade, I took up saxophone.

I don't see us as a big media gimmick band. We don't have a cultivated appearance or anything like Kiss.

Perfection' is man's ultimate illusion. It simply doesn't exist in the universe.... If you are a perfectionist, you are guaranteed to be a loser in whatever you do.

What could there be in this document written by a young girl in 1917?

Your hereditary is not nearly as important as your legacy.

...that standing army can never be formidable (threatening) to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in the use of arms.

I'm at a point where I don't have to wait for the income from the record to survive, so I'm in a comfortable zone, but I'll make rap records as long as I feel I have something to rap about.

People judge you by the way you play in the playoffs.

One cannot reach Truth by untruthfulness. Truthful conduct alone can reach truth.

Photography knows how to authenticate its misrepresentations.

[Prudence] replaces [strength] by saving the man who has the misfortune of not possessing it from most occasions when it's needed.

I in my own house am an emperor, And will defend what's mine.