I have a low tolerance for mediocrity in music and life. I'm into pain and joy and the in-between doesn't interest me.

Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.

America's criminal justice system isn't known for rehabilitation. I'm not sure that, as a society, we are even interested in that concept anymore.

I don't believe that songwriting has to be profound, but I truly believe that it's a crime for you to go outta your way for it not to be.

Actually, in its purest form, Islam is incredibly tolerant. That makes what's going on in the world really bizarre.

All we do as songwriters is rewrite the songs that have impressed us till we find our own voice. It's part of learning the craft.

You see things differently at 40 than you do at 31. Especially if you got to 40 the way I did.

Every day on Earth is another chance to get it right.

I don't really think in terms of obstacles. My biggest obstacle is always myself.

To me, religion is an agreement between a group of people about what God is. Spirituality is a one-on-one relationship.

What's important is you wake up in the morning and something doesn't exist, and when you finish you day's work something is in the world that wasn't there before.

Being a woman, I tried, I cared, I loved and blamed in return.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

You don't have to have an attitude if you're famous.

It has been said of the world's history hitherto that might makes right. It is for us and for our time to reverse the maxim, and to say that right makes might.

My mother was an economics professor. I'm proficient in math, and statistics, game theory, symbolic logic and all of that.

And why not do something new every day of your life? Change! Change!

I wrote a graphic novel called 'Soul Stealer' with big, beautiful, epic artwork by Chris Shy. It grew into a trilogy.

The hand that follows intellect can achieve.

The best way to hate is the worst. 'Tis to find what the hated need, Never mind of what actual worth, And wipe that out of the earth. Let them die of unsatisfied greed.

Almost everyone today is brain-damaged by our education which is designed to produce docile automatons.