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.

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

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.

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

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.

When Bad People start doing Good things with bad motives

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.

America's founding Ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more - and nothing less.

It's easier to believe in yourself after someone else has believed in you first.

When you get immersed in whatever you're writing, the world does suddenly get so filtered through what you're writing. And then of course what you're writing then filters the world right back.

A lot of people just thought I'd be a .260 hitter all my life. I was kind of like, 'Let me make some adjustments and let me learn the game a little bit.'

I'm not a good collector.

The body does whatever it wants. I am not my body; I am my mind.

Every age has its temptations, its weaknesses, its dangers. Ours is in the line of the snobbish and the sordid.

I think the 1970s will always be the decade for me. Obviously, I grew up in that era, but the beauty standard was touchable, kissable.