There are really two core principles at play here. There’s giving people a voice so that people can express their opinions. Then, there’s keeping the community safe, which I think is really important. We’re not gonna let people plan violence or attack each other or do bad things.

The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.

I don’t know, I feel desperate when I sing. And I look desperate – it feels like I’m singing for my life, which makes me twitch, if that makes sense.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.

Guns are bad, I tell you.

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

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

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

I can’t make a song for a particular person or demographic. If I love it, I’m gonna do it. I have to perform it for the rest of my life. A song is like a tattoo – you can never get away from it.

As long as my music is real, it’s no limit to how many ears I can grab.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

I think one of my pursuits over the years is trying to answer the question of, ‚What else can you do with a voice other than stand in front of a microphone and sing?‘

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

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

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings – words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

Writing is like a ‚lust,‘ or like ‚scratching when you itch.‘ Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

If I have something to say, I want it to be meaningful.

You know, my Grandpop Finnegan used to have an expression: he used to say, ‚Joey, the guy in Olyphant’s out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law’s out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.‘

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

To the extent I am known, I think I am known as a person who expresses his opinion freely about things – and I was sensitive to the possibility that if I was seen taking money for saying nice things about a product, my comments and choices and opinions would become, understandably, suspect.

Silence is safer than speech.

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

A yawn is a silent shout.

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart’s the last part moves, her last, the tongue.

The oppression of any people for opinion’s sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

To be smart on crime, we should not be in a position of constantly reacting to crime after it happens. We should be looking at preventing crime before it happens.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

Once I’ve written something it does tend to run away from me. I don’t seem to have any part of it – it’s no longer my piece of writing.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

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

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

Irrespective of age, we mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love.

I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I’m a writer… I write.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

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

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

To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

I hate the idea of genres.

Silence is more eloquent than words.

Beautiful speech doesn’t need protection, it’s ugly speech that needs protection. We have these cultural norms that allow people to say really ugly things. You don’t have to invite them to your dinner party, but you should let them say it.

There’s no such thing as going to a soapbox and saying, ‚The government’s corrupt,‘ and not having the intelligence service see your face. In the digital world, that can be done.

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.‘

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.

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.

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.

I have all the emotions that everyone has; it just appears that I don’t.

You can stroke people with words.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.

A letter does not blush.