I would much rather not be the center of attention, and I'd much rather travel and be writing my novel, rather than standing on a stage and trying to get people to understand something.

I'd rather be somewhere building a house, if I knew how. The whole idea of being a professional artist is like a demeaning kind of thing.

Actually, my ideal life would be to have an evergreen tree farm and, every December, I'd load them up and just stand out on the street and sell Christmas trees.

I love Lana Del Rey! It's weird because I read something that said, "Oh, Willis Earl Beal and Lana Del Rey are the antithesis of each other." When in fact, she was what I wanted to sound like.

I want to help people to not feel alone, like I feel and have felt for so long. Everybody's just trying their best. I guess I'm like an anti-star.

The only way for me to give a good performance is to make myself extremely uncomfortable - and it just so happens that being on stage makes me extremely uncomfortable.

I first saw Dead Man in high school, and it changed everything. That movie was like a memory to me - I would get things that occurred in that movie confused with my actual life.

People tend to believe that I want to make soul music, which is not entirely untrue but, really, I want to be like the black Tom Waits - I don't want to make one kind of sound.

Everything that I do is limitation and complete intuition. I'm a human being. I'm not a musician. I'm not an entertainer. I don't know anything!

I don't mind being artificial sometimes, because I like veiling myself. I mean, I'm not honest or sincere: I am self-centered and narcissistic. I just want to be this entity.

That's not to say I came from the streets or anything - most of the time I was on my grandmother's back porch. I was kept in a constant state of amniotic fluid.

Create a great future. Be happy NOW.

Forgiveness is most Christlike when it is given to the undeserving.

We probably lose the battles, but we win the wars!

Drinking is not a spectator sport.

Gabrielle turned to Colm. “These men will be of interest to you.” Colm looked them over. “Why is that?” he asked. With her back to the infidels, she whispered, “They like to dig holes.

Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.

Generally, you are held to a sound and that becomes your sound. That gets branded as your sound, and all the copycats start with it because the labels are looking for that sound.

Mum used to hide love letters from my boyfriends and put me down. Now I understand that she was a Polish immigrant forced to settle in Chicago. She was jealous of the freedom life gave me.

Education isn't everything, for a start it isn't an elephant

When we love - we grow