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

When I listen to a song, I don’t say, ‚Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.‘ I’m thinking, ‚That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.‘

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

My speculation is that the U.S. does not want to establish the principle that it has to defer to some higher authority before carrying out the use of violence.

Be careful what you set your heart upon – for it will surely be yours.

Why, if someone is good in one field can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?

Music belongs to the people. To no one else. To no one else.

Any artist, the work you do, if it’s a painting or if it’s a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else’s life. That’s what’s fun about sharing art.

We have no right to express an opinion until we know all of the answers.

Order is heaven’s first law.

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.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

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 don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

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

Silence is safer than speech.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.

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

Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two.

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

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

‚No comment‘ is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

Tears are the silent language of grief.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference.

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

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

All our words from loose using have lost their edge.

My father used to have an expression. He’d say, ‚Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect. It’s about your place in your community.‘

The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.

Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

What you are comes to you.

Language is the dress of thought.

Strong emotions such as passion and bliss are indications that you’re connected to Spirit, or ‚inspired,‘ if you will. When you’re inspired, you activate dormant forces, and the abundance you seek in any form comes streaming into your life.

Money doesn’t talk, it swears.

Belief creates the actual fact.

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

We don’t make music – it makes us.

When I say ‚Crush your enemy‘, I don’t literally mean it.

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.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

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

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 say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

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

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

It’s funny because I’ve made a living off of words, but words get in the way of what you really want to say.

I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.