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

I am not going to be a mouthpiece for language that I detest.

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.

Don’t get the impression that you arouse my anger. You see, one can only be angry with those he respects.

My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

I want the reader to feel something is astonishing – not the ‚what happens‘ but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.

It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

I write music every day.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.

Making music is like shopping for me. Every song is like a new pair of shoes.

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

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

Well, it’s looks like I’ve a love-hate thing going on with Monaco.

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.

The truth is that there is no actual stress or anxiety in the world; it’s your thoughts that create these false beliefs. You can’t package stress, touch it, or see it. There are only people engaged in stressful thinking.

It is important to remember yourself.

Real joy seems to me almost as unlike security or prosperity as it is unlike agony.

Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.

We don’t make music – it makes us.

Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.

The answer I found is you stay away from the people who make fun of you, and you join these ad hoc groups who understand your craziness.

Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.

There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.

I’m an emotional person.

Exercise is really important to me – it’s therapeutic. So if I’m ever feeling tense or stressed or like I’m about to have a meltdown, I’ll put on my iPod and head to the gym or out on a bike ride along Lake Michigan with the girls.

Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It’s a black wall. It’s a thief.

Those whom we can love, we can hate; to others we are indifferent.

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

Many of my fans often tell me that they listen to my songs to get through things. And therefore, obviously, I hope that they can picture being in a place where things are better… I hope my songs can bring people to a calm place.

The beauty of me being on stage is I have a voice.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

What the heck is true love? I remember feeling, back when I was 12 and ‚going‘ with this girl, ‚Is this true love?‘

I calculate that I took 20,000 punches, but I earned millions and kept a lot of it. I may talk slow, but my mind is OK.

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

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

Everyone knows nowadays that people ‚have complexes‘. What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.

Those movies sure got me into a rut.

When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

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.

I have a little bit of PTSD when I hear a big bang or a loud noise or keys – I jump out of my skin.

Science never makes things that do not have to do with what we feel, by which I mean what we want and what we fear.

When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.

Writing ‚We Are Never Getting Back Together‘ was one of the most hilarious experiences I have ever had in the studio because it just happened so naturally.

When I’m stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

It’s a rather rude gesture, but at least it’s clear what you mean.

One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.

Literally wrote ‚Starboy‘ in 30 minutes.

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation.

It’s not possible to stop love.