My strength is character. I'm pretty good at building walking-talking humans with brains like beehives.

It's always surprised me that mainstream America had the good taste to like R.E.M. It doesn't have the digestible quality the general public tends to look for in its favorite musicians.

The first horror movie I saw, in first or second grade, was My Bloody Valentine [1981], where there's a deranged killer in a miner mask stalking a small coal town.

There's a structure to a detective story that I can easily understand. I understand playing that particular game. It's like solving a puzzle. Or creating a puzzle.

I was never afraid on stage. That's where I was the least afraid. I could just do what I do and I had the amplification and the lights.

When you create a fence, you keep people out, but you also limit your mobility.

I have always wanted to be either a cinematographer or a veterinarian.

I've never had a mentor. I've always wanted one. I'm actually really disappointed that nobody took my under their wing.

Looking back, [R.E.M.]videos, by in large, have always been art films. I'm thinking of "Losing My Religion." That's a landmark piece.

There is a value to moving more slowly through a story.

There's also something sexual about watching the nubile girl in terror. But you do take on her fear as your own.

By studying yesterday, you will understand today.

Every day is a new journey for me, and I feel like, in my lifetime, I've been blessed to experience such a lot.

When we [people] are operating from the belief that we're not connected, it feels so dangerous and scary and vulnerable and awful.

Skill is fine, and genius is splendid, but the right contacts are more valuable than either.

The altruism of foresters can serve as a motto for humanity in general: "We reap what we have not sown. We sow what we do not reap."

I'm nihilistic, antagonistic, violent, horrible - but not obliterated, yet. I just refuse to be beaten down. I think it's stubborness that keeps me going.

Ive always been very visceral in that I feel things very deeply.

Thresholds of pain, indignity and incapacity are entirely personal.

I want to inspire people to become their higher selves, their best selves.

If my serenade of song and story should serve as a pillow for some composer's head, as yet perhaps unborn, to dream and build on our fond melodies in his tomorrow, I have not labored in vain.