I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

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

Emotions are continually affecting our thought processes and decisions, below the level of our awareness. And the most common emotion of them all is the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

I don’t want enemies. I want friends, and I want them in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and loving whoever they want to.

There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too – eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko’s, Fatburger, Subway – I was a sandwich artist – and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.

What keeps me motivated is love and passion.

It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.

Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.

I became a people-watcher when I lost all my friends when I was 12.

I love life because what more is there?

If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us.

It’s about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness – sonic goodies.

No matter what, I always make it home for Christmas. I love to go to my Tennessee Mountain Home and invite all of my nieces and nephews and their spouses and kids and do what we all like to do – eat, laugh, trade presents and just enjoy each other… and sometimes I even dress up like Santa Claus!

All I can do is try to create my own brand and have people appreciate me for that.

When ignorance gets started it knows no bounds.

Agape, the love of each one of us for the other, from the closest to the furthest, is in fact the only way that Jesus has given us to find the way of salvation and of the Beatitudes.

I think ‚Invisible‘ is a great song, but I don’t know how accessible it is.

Of course I get hurt.

Hatred is settled anger.

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

It’s a representation of yourself, and you can express a lot of your creativity with what your wearing.

I sing seriously to my mom on the phone. To put her to sleep, I have to sing ‚Maria‘ from West Side Story. When I hear her snoring, I hang up.

One day, I’ll be listening to a bunch of Ray Charles, the next day it’s nothing but Red Hot Chili Peppers. The next day it might be Tupac all day.

Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.

I am whatever you say I am; if I wasn’t, then why would you say I am.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

For some reason, I’m really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs.

I have to admit I’ve found myself doing the same things that a lot of other rock stars do or are forced to do. Which is not being able to respond to mail, not being able to keep up on current music, and I’m pretty much locked away a lot. The outside world is pretty foreign to me.

Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

I have never used Auto-Tune in a live television performance, and I have never used Auto-Tune in any of my concerts. That is a promise.

On a good night, I get underwear, bras, and hotel-room keys thrown onstage… You start to think that you’re Tom Jones.

Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.

There’s a lot of pressure putting an album out all over the world and hoping people everywhere like it.

We have a Boesendorfer piano that I play every day. It keeps my brain and my fingers active.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I’m angry about bankers. About the government.

The beauty of a woman must be seen from in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined – to strengthen each other – to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.

Her body calculated to a millimeter to suggest a bud yet guarantee a flower.

I’m putting out this free music, constantly putting it out.

My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication – it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness – it is all that I have – and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.

I was ready to quit music. It felt to me like music equalled death.

I can dance to just about anything.

The reason children accept discipline from their parents is because they know their parents love them.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.

Marriage is the death of hope.

Ain’t nothing like a good cry.

Hallow the body as a temple to comeliness and sanctify the heart as a sacrifice to love; love recompenses the adorers.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.

The whole slacker generation totally didn’t apply to us musically.