I'm a firm believer that you learn a hell of a lot more from your failures than you do from your successes.

My family was into music. My dad was into music down south. My mom and grandmother were into gospel music so there were all types. That was my inspiration.

Don't try to be someone else. Be yourself.

Just immerse yourself in the culture of the music - it will open some doors for you.

Nowadays it's hard to get somebody to invest the time - everybody wants to be famous rather than be a good musician.

I'm just a restless soul musically.

Some of the best advice I was given was that me doing a bad version of me is better than me doing a good version of someone else.

When you are sitting in a room and somebody does something or says something and a thought comes, an idea or a melody - you have to just grab it while it's there because it will go away.

I like to say that I had a really good musical education because it was inclusive of all styles of music and I like it like that.

Words are the money of fools.

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

A studio session ... provides the greatest chance for control. Even though there is total freedom, I still dislike studio photography and the contrived images that usually stem from this genre.

This is a good thing, mixing culture to make something new, something no one has ever seen. This is kind of a new history.

Men in great fortunes are strangers to themselves, and while they are in the puzzle of business, they have no time to tend their health either of body or mind.

In our marginal existence, what else is there but this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to?

My grandmother worked on a fruit and vegetable market stall.

Rose and Dimitri moved almost as one entity, like a matched pair of wolfes or lions, both wary and deadly as they studied their surroundings, taking no detail or person for granted.

Records are there to be broken.

Taking the question in general, I should say, in the case of many poets, that the most important thing for them to do ... is to write as little as possible