What's really fun is to write under different names.

The first time I met Patti Smith was in a laundromat. We knew some of the same people, including Richard Hell.

I just don't like people coming up to me and saying something. It immediately makes you become insincere. There is no way you can react to it sincerely.

When I think of 'influence', I think of 'influenza', like somebody's picked up a germ.

The song Venus de Milo, the whole subject of it is Love is a drug.

I never liked mellow sounding guitar.

You can't get so interested in just making sounds. The point of it all is some kind of expression.

Practice? I never practice. I just write songs and take solos.

I like thinking of myself as invisible. I find it a very advantageous way to live.

Everybody's out trying to be commercial. I'm not trying to be anything, really.

When somebody turned me on to a Coltrane record around seventh grade, I took up saxophone.

A leader in the leader is your positional status in the body while the leader in a leader is Christ in you the hope of glory

The best songs are the songs you write that you don't know anything about. They're an escape.

I'm a painter, I'm an artist. I take things too far sometimes. I really need some comfort.

I want to do something that nobody has done before me. And I want to do it in such a way that nobody will forget me for it.

I was dreaming I was on the Sullivan Show.

Nothing finite is true, is interesting, is worthy to fix my attention. All that is particular is exclusive, and all that is exclusive repels me.

Winning breeds winning.

The sun doesn't stop shining because some people are blind.

Neil Hamburger writes such cutting jokes.

I don't care if you want to hunt, I don't care if you think it's your right. I say, sorry, you are not allowed to own a gun, and if you do own a gun I think you should go to prison.