When I was about 3, my grandfather used to give me and my sister a nickel to sit out on the front porch with him and sing songs.

I love the idea of stepping out of the band situation into a solo world with no boundaries, no expectations, where nothing is out of bounds.

Around '75 when the recession hit, club owners started going to disco because it was cheaper for them to just buy a sound system than it was to hire a band.

Success is fickle, but creativity is a gift.

I'm not the kind of guy who deserves to play a vintage guitar because I'm too rough on instruments.

It was more fun trying to figure out I Want To Hold Your Hand than to take lessons. By this time I knew basic chords

I wish I had a nickel for every song that I've left in the bathroom, written down on a matchbox, or just totally forgotten about

Songwriting is the other weight on the opposite side of the scale from touring. They balance me out creatively.

On acoustic guitar I tend to stay in the key of D for some reason. On electric guitar I keep basic: C, G, D, and A. The key of D minor is also real good for me.

If I have an idea, I write it down, although I usually carry a little dictation machine with me because I'm too lazy to write

I wrote songs all my life, where anyone wanted to hear them or not.

In such troubled times, we must remember the value writers have—the value of inventing new language to keep pace with the rapidly transforming world around us.

I'm taking all the negatives in my life, and turning them into a positive.

Anyone can go online and write anything they want about people they don't even know, and most of the time, that is fueled by hate. The sad part is that people actually believe what they read online.

I used the word 'prose' in the Trans-Siberian in the early Latin sense of prosa dictu. Poem seemed to me too pretentious, too narrow. Prose is more open, popular.

The Higher Self is whispering to you softly in the silence between your thoughts.

We can win the struggle to avoid responsibility for our personal lives, but if we do, what we lose is our lives.

The soft and weak can overcome the hard and strong.

Galen recognized, with some considerable puzzlement it seems, that Christians exhibited the virtues that he associated with the discipline of philosophy.

Sure every driver has his value and you want to be respected... but again money is not something that drives me.

I think definitely people know me from playing creeps and weirdos, and I'm definitely looking to expand my range.