The congregation that I was raised in was one that sang and a non-instrumental fashion. It was all a cappella singing, and so that had a major influence on me.

I live out of cans a lot. But I try to indulge only in healthy canned food.

It's meant to reaffirm the validity of that music - clean, minimalist, honest, classic music.

In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.

In the dark morning silence, I placed a gun to her head. She wore red dresses, but now she lay dead.

Buddy , you might think that I've lost my mind. But mister, I'd pay twice to do it one more time.

But that is a valid, continuing service that that music - which is, in some cases, 80 or 90 years old - is rendering. And proving its own timelessness.

I'm a thousand miles from nowhere, time don't matter to me. I'm a thousand miles from nowhere and there's not place that I want to be.

Control success before it controls you.

My music is very personal. I've created it in solitude. I face a white wall and beller. I like that sound - the expression of loneliness. That's what it's all about.

Quality is timeless: It will clearly define itself.

I had failed to make a gift of myself to God.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

What is the secret of success? Right decisions. How do you make right decisions? Experience. How do you gain experience? Wrong decisions.

Religion is as healthy and normal as life itself.

What we're dealt with hopefully is two arms, two eyes, two legs, a head, a heart. The variations, the extensions, the possibilities of the human body, what that can do

What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?

I did not write half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed

Promises are worse than lies. You don't just make them believe, you also make them hope.

I wasn't a stranger to hard times. I used to read the Bible - well, I still do, but when I was young I read the Bible quite a bit.

Love as a power can go anywhere. It isn't sentimental. It doesn't have to be pretty, yet it doesn't deny pain.