I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

Because you have things like ‚American Idol‘ and you’ve got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it’s easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.

I write some country music. There’s a song called ‚I Hope You Dance.‘ Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.

I try to use my experience and the fact that I grew up in the ghetto – I tell people you don’t have to rob or steal to get out of the ghetto.

I love the Sex Pistols. I’m a big Beach Boys fan and a huge Zeppelin and Queen fan.

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

It’s always fun to talk about jazz.

It’s all make believe, isn’t it?

I just want to keep writing music.

And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.

I just kind of wake up with a new idea and new dreams every day, and I follow that dream, as they say.

It’s fun to be hopelessly in love. It’s dangerous, but it’s fun.

Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.

There is no love of life without despair of life.

The solar system can support a trillion humans. And then we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

Work aside, we come to New York for the possibility of interaction and inspiration.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

I’m the same kid who used to hop the trains with headphones and just go to downtown Manhattan, walk around and listen to music or walk through the city. The fame restricts that. It’s a small complaint in comparison to the benefits I get from it, but the restrictive part is what I don’t like – and the fact that it’s not reversible.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

Most of us experience a life full of wonderful moments and difficult moments. But for many of us, even when we are most joyful, there is fear behind our joy.

You listen to Charlie Parker or John Coltrane before they found their voice, they sounded different. And when you listen to them after they found their voice on their instruments, they sound more confident and in control. Artists have that, too.

He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that.

In cricket, my superhero is Sachin Tendulkar. He has always been my hero and will continue to remain so. Apart from him and outside cricket, my mother has remained my inspiration. Whatever difficult time I had faced, she was always there for me. She has given me all the strength. She maintained her composure and supported me in tough times.

Whatever is on the page is what I’m married to. I’m very prepared. I’m a thespian. I don’t like to improv. I don’t like to go off course ‚cause I think that’s where stuff happens. When you stick to the material ‚cause it’s written so well, that’s where the magic happens.

I love good, loud speakers.

Mick Fleetwood was one of my first interviews. And if you’ve ever talked to that dude, he’s the sweetest guy in the world – he’s just a trip.

I’m in this business to be creative – I’ll even diminish it and say to be a content provider.

Funk, I don’t think I have anything to do with funk. I’ve never considered myself funky.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‚Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.‘

Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.

Siren voices tell me, ‚You don’t have to keep going on.‘ And then you think, ‚I’m a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?‘ I don’t know. I like being a writer.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

The truest wisdom is a resolute determination.

I just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I’ll show you someone who has overcome adversity.

I like to choreograph and create and design the costumes and do it all and then step back and watch it and then move on to the next project.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.

Life begins on the other side of despair.

My drive is other people’s success.

I never wanted to look pretty on stage and sing about something we’ve all heard about before.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

I’m always interested in what you can do with technology that people haven’t thought of doing yet.

Hatred is settled anger.

Nobody should come to the movies unless he believes in heroes.

Football is a sad game.

I grew up on the Beatles; I love Linkin Park and Green Day. I heard hip-hop for the first time at 11 and realized what I was missing.

I’ve always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that.

Being a sex symbol is a heavy load to carry, especially when one is tired, hurt and bewildered.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.

Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

I love those who yearn for the impossible.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.