Playing the violin and singing and whistling are just three different ways of making sound.

I've done my share of busking, and it's fun until it isn't. There are musicians in the subways that will make you cry, they're so good.

I think I'm still a little too intense for my own good sometimes.

Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.

I guess I'm attracted to more archaic words because they can be imbued with more meaning, because their definition is elusive.

My favorite literature to read is fairly dry history. I like the framework, and my imagination can do the rest.

Sometimes I think I don't have much choice in the matter. It's just what happens, and I'm following my instincts the whole time.

Songwriters can sort of get away with murder. You can throw out crazy theories and not have to back it up with data or graphs or research.

All the folks I play with come from jazz backgrounds or at least appreciate spontaneity within the parameters of a pop song.

I am, in some sense, a writer. Even though I kinda downplay the word thing, I do enjoy writing sometimes.

I think when I was pretty young I got really into the tone of my instrument and I remember just playing one note for an hour to just kind of feel the resonance of the violin.

I want to change the world, and do something valuable and beautiful. I want people to remember me before I'm dead, and then more afterwards.

I wrote a whole novel before The Beach. Unpublishable. Junk. But, for some reason I stuck at novels and wrote a second. Still not sure why I didn't give up. Stubborn, maybe.

He's like a demented ferret up a wee drainpipe.

Mistakes, after all, are endemic to foreign and military policy given the unpredictability of events and the difficulty of securing reliable information in a place like Iraq.

The best decisions aren't made with your mind, but with your Instinct.

When we withhold the tithe we bring upon ourselves a curse.

When I say R&B is dead, I'm pretty much saying the creativity is gone.

A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more.

Once you're alive, you can't ever be dead.

Research is what drives me. When I get a script, I go to the real world and touch the real people.