Who you are as a performer is one thing, but when you're making records, you're dealing with musicians' tastes, their goals, their wants, their needs, everyone's individual pride.

Rock and roll doesn't allow you to grow up - especially if you're not trying very hard to.

The thing is, unfortunately, I write the best songs when I'm miserable.

You are only as big as your experiences.

I can't read sheet music, I have to just listen to it, and then just go for it.

Computers and the Internet have made it really easy to rant. It's made everyone overly opinionated.

Making an album should be an honest experience. It shouldn't be about trying to gauge where popular music is today; it should be about artistic expression and putting down what you want to put down.

Sing the song or keep it inside.

I tend to get my hands into all these other things and all these distractions, and after a while I start feeling depleted.

I prefer a three-piece suit myself. Very sixties rock and roll. But they're not too quirky. Businessmen could wear them.

Writing the songs and producing the songs and arranging them and recording them is your canvas and your palette and your brush.

But stupid things have a gravity and a momentum of their own

That's not a religion, that's Pokemon.

For the analyst it is a source of never-ending astonishment how comparatively well a person can function with the core of himself not participating.

People could say a lot of negative things about the apocalypse, but there was no arguing the air quality in Los Angeles had really improved.

The struggle against poverty in the world and the challenge of cutting wealthy country emissions all has a single, very simple solution... Here it is: Put a price on carbon.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

I have always drawn strength from being close to home.

We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.

How would the US be different today if people coming off the boat were greeted with a welfare check instead of a shovel?

I have been doing this for eight years now so the negative things do not effect me as much as they did at the beginning.