Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

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

The world can criticize me, but l can always criticize it back.

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

See that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

I was so ashamed of who I was.

‚Victory‘ is like, you won, so the question is, what? What did you win? I think that the songs go into that. It’s just about reaching a place in myself.

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

Creative people don’t behave very well generally. If you’re looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you’re gonna be depressed real fast. I don’t have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She’s my first priority.

Pick the day. Enjoy it – to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come… The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present – and I don’t want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.

Can people who hunger so desperately for what other people have ever have enough?

Music has the power to inspire the world.

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

You are remembered for the rules you break.

I more fear what is within me than what comes from without.

I didn’t want to play it boring and safe. I also didn’t want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they’re even scarier than first ones.

I’m selfish.

For an author, the nice characters aren’t much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They’re doing it for themselves.

The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

I love playing ego and insecurity combined.

Every single one of the guys that I’ve written songs about has been tracked down on MySpace by my fans.

I used to like to set different film clips to classical music, not even my own songs, but make little movies.

I kinda like the idea of having an album that’s all me.

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

I thought I would be a guy on the radio.

Doing graphic novels is cool! It’s fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.

I think some people would love to be able to make the clothes I make – and of course, I do influence them, but they keep simplifying, and minimalism doesn’t quite work.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

A writer of fiction is really… a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.

I’m sure like everyone else I’m not always the happiest if I don’t do a good job in quali or the race or whatever, so I think beating myself up sometimes makes me work harder.

Young people can create beautiful things.

I feel like my music has become a lot of things. It’s hard to label the evolution, but I like there to be an evolution. I just like to paint with all different kinds of colors.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.

‚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.‘

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

My friends, there are no friends.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it.

There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

I’m still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.

It’s like a jar of salad dressing sitting on a shelf… most of the seasoning settles to the bottom of the bottle. But when you shake that bottle up, all the ingredients mix together and then the dressing can add flavor to a salad. In the same way, we can stir ourselves up and regain the reverence, respect and awe we once had for the Lord.

I would venture to guess that the biggest reason creative types don’t produce isn’t because they don’t have vision… or talent… in most cases, it’s a lack of discipline.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.