When I pick up the guitar, it's a melody, and that's what drives the lyrics. It's bits and pieces of truth, but it is storytelling.

Don't let your eyes refuse to seeDon't let your ears refuse to hear

Well, I looked my demons in the eyes laid bare my chest, said 'Do your best, destroy me. You see, I’ve been to hell and back so many times, I must admit you kind of bore me.

There's nothing in the world so sad as talking to a man who never knew his life was his for making.

We all have that inner voice that is wise, even if we don't always follow it. It's that voice I'm trying to listen to.

Well it's the hurt I hide that fuels the fires inside me

You can make bad choices and find yourself in a downward spiral or you can find something that gets you out of it.

I am very self-critical, but that's a good thing because it keeps me growing as a human being and as a musician.

Every song asks to be sung in a different way.

You have to believe in yourself before anybody else believes in you.

The thing I love about music is that you can take things that are painful, deep things that hurt you, and you can turn them into something beautiful.

Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.

For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.

Anyone's childhood can be an act of disablement if rehearsed and replayed and squinted at in a certain light. . .

I get pretty impatient with people who are able-bodied but are somehow paralyzed for other reasons.

Making a wrong choice early may limit making the right choice later.

We listen, we watch, we learn. We open our hearts and we open our minds, open our souls.

What are books but tangible dreams? What is reading if it is not dreaming? The best books cause us to dream; the rest are not worth reading.

Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book.

Its harder for people to seek retirement from themselves than from the law

If history moves forward, knowledge of it travels backwards, so that in writing of our own recent past we are continually meeting ourselves coming the other way.