I find myself a lot more open to bands if I just hear their song. It gives you an opportunity to engage with the thing itself and not be overwhelmed by everything else that surrounds it.

The Flaming Lips have been on Warner Bros. forever, and certainly everything I heard growing up was on a major label in some way, from the Cure to Radiohead to Bjork.

Being in a rock band, I feel a certain responsibility to have a weird haircut. I mean, who else gets to do that?

Music is made by individuals. Some artists will be very politically overt in their songs, some will be more subtle. You have to be true to yourself, true to your nature.

The idea of dancing to bad house music is something I could never get behind.

I think of hip hop as a mass media, radio, MTV thing. It’s been extremely relevant over the last 10 years and rock music is just not anymore—-a tear rolls down my cheek as I say that.

Whenever you do anything or say anything, you're opening yourself up to criticism. But that's okay.

What I miss [about church] is being forced to be in community with people that aren't the same as me.

A lot of artists write about the same things their whole career.

I think filmmakers all secretly wanna be musicians and all musicians secretly wanna be filmmakers.

The film Black Orpheus is one of my favorite films of all time, which is set in Carnival in Brazil.

Art is my Life.

The satisfaction? The joy? That comes from solving problems and making things.

With certainty, I can predict that there will never be a cure to cancer. The only hope for any of us is to concentrate on cause and prevent the misery.

The fans motivated me. They gave me the incentive to want to play and to want to win and to continue to play as my career progressed. They were never a distraction.

Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing.

So for years I kept mum about my passion for needle arts.

I'm trying to put together quality at-bats and hit the ball hard somewhere.

People are recognizing that I am an entrepreneur and do more than be on a reality TV show.

I think my parents - my parents were very hands-off, quite liberal in terms of their - they really - they did encourage me, but they never really pushed me into anything, really.

The hardest thing about being famous is that ... in a conversation everybody's agreeing with what you're saying. ... You need people who can tell you what you don't want to hear.