Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you’re listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people.

I’d like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that’s not just e-mail with a view.

The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.

A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.

Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers.

Bob Dylan is like an alien on this earth, and I love him! I cried when I saw him play live because I was so close to him.

When we go out to the country and just sit there, what we’re really doing is just switching off various kinds of alertness that we don’t have to use. When we do that, we are stopping being defensive. We are no longer shutting ourselves off from different types of experiences, we are welcoming them in.

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way. They want to occupy your attention.

One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you’re allowed to fail.

Social media can be very effective in creating movements. In the beginning, that is how I first got attention.

You know, fame is a funny thing, man, especially, you know, actors, musicians, rappers, rock singers, it’s kind of a lifestyle and it’s easy to get caught up in it – you go to bars, you go to clubs, everyone’s doing a certain thing… It’s tough.

Right now I’m just delighted to be alive and to have had a nice long bath.

The gigantic tension before the shooting of an arrow, and the total relaxation seconds later, is my way of connecting to the universe.

Have fun in your command. Don’t always run at a breakneck pace. Take leave when you’ve earned it, spend time with your families.

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.

Acting is just a process of relaxation, actually. Knowing the text so well and trusting that the instinct and the subconscious mind, whatever you want to call it, is going to take over.

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

Pay attention, don’t let life go by you. Fall in love with the back of your cereal box.

Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.

It’s always great to perform at home in the good ol‘ U.S.A.

I’m definitely looking forward to the day when I stop working – if I ever stop working. I like the idea of keeling over in my tomato vines in Sardinia or northern Italy.

My head’s never really quiet. The only time I can get it to turn off is if I watch ‚CSI‘ or ‚Law & Order,‘ where I have to follow the crime. If I can’t turn my head off during that, I know I’ve really got a problem.

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that’s pretty much all you can ask.

Mind over mattress.

When I’m in my 50s, I kind of think I’ll want to be in a garden.

Throw off your worries when you throw off your clothes at night.

I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any.

Hmm, on my downtime, I take a shower or listen to the Bible on tape.

Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.

I read a lot of obscure books and it is nice to open a book.

I tweet in the morning and the evening. To write 12 hours a day, there is a moment when you’re really tired. It’s my relaxing time.

I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.

I guess there is nothing that will get your mind off everything like golf. I have never been depressed enough to take up the game, but they say you get so sore at yourself you forget to hate your enemies.

You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

Meditation helps me to calm down.

I am particularly drawn to the form of meditation called Japa. I know it works.

To describe my scarce leisure time in today’s terms, I always default to reading.

I think some of my colleagues‘ spicier lines are distracting. They draw attention away from what the justice is trying to say.

I do think coaches need to get away from the game more, though. It’s good for them.

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.

I love sleep; it’s my favorite.

There’s nothing more comfortable or leisurely than having a pair of Ugg slippers on in the house.

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

People like Frank Zappa and Bryan Ferry knew we could pick and choose from the history of music, stick things together looking for friction and energy. They were more like playwrights; they invented characters and wrote a life around them.

His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.

I sell escapism.

When you have good friends you’ve been around, every time they talk, you don’t give them your full attention. You don’t look them in the eye and stop. Half the time, you’re listening, half the time, you are ignoring them.

When all the routines and details and the human bores get on our nerves, we just yearn to go away from here to somewhere else. To go fishing is a sound, a valid, and an accepted reason for an escape. It requires no explanation.

The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.

I do value the respect I get from my contemporaries, but to have Oasis cover my song, to have Puff Daddy cover a song, to have Goldie come along to my gigs – that’s where my ego is at. To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that’s very cool.

Going home helps the content.

The best cure for the body is a quiet mind.

I tend to stay up late, not because I’m partying but because it’s the only time of the day when I’m alone and don’t have to be performing.

There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern… No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

You don’t always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that’s plenty.

Once people are aware of your presence, and perhaps vaguely intrigued, you need to stir their interest before it settles on someone else.

It’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.