Nothing can affect my voice, it’s so bad.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

I get a more passionate delivery when I just go in the booth and let the music talk.

The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle.

I was never particularly fond of my voice.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

I’m just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.

Art’s everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

I don’t know the law, the kind of law of quantity and quality, but I think the opportunity of people being able to express themselves and to have the means of production is a great thing. It’s also changing how we’re telling stories.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

Swearing is industry language. For as long as we’re alive it’s not going to change. You’ve got to be boisterous to get results.

The artist in me cries out for design.

I think women want to take care of themselves, and I think having a voice in how that is done is very important.

Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it shows us itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world.

I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset – tears are words waiting to be written.

When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.

When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart’s the last part moves, her last, the tongue.

Lettin‘ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier ‚n puttin‘ it back in.

Preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.

I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life it is bad to damage and destroy life.

A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.

To the extent I am known, I think I am known as a person who expresses his opinion freely about things – and I was sensitive to the possibility that if I was seen taking money for saying nice things about a product, my comments and choices and opinions would become, understandably, suspect.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

The best football is always about expression of emotion. Always.

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

I hold a lot of things in. I’m always making sure everybody is okay. I usually don’t rage; I usually don’t curse. So for me, it’s a great thing to be able to scream and say whatever I want.

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

A letter does not blush.

The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.

There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unspeakable, all those things come into being a composer, into writing music, into searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

I think one of my pursuits over the years is trying to answer the question of, ‚What else can you do with a voice other than stand in front of a microphone and sing?‘

And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.

As long as my music is real, it’s no limit to how many ears I can grab.

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They’re my biggest heroes. I love everything about Leonard Cohen: his lyrics and his voice. He seems like a really clever man, and Bob Dylan does as well. He’s just really cool.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

I’ve always appreciated a turn of phrase.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

I just make the pictures and where they fall is where they fall. If somebody likes them, that’s always nice. And if they don’t like them, then too bad.

Beauty without expression is boring.

Once I’ve written something it does tend to run away from me. I don’t seem to have any part of it – it’s no longer my piece of writing.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

If it’s illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail!

Language is the dress of thought.

Some artists just ruin their voices because they don’t know any better.

People have so much going on in their heads. I’m like, If you could write a song, you’d feel so much better!

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.