“What if what you do to survive kills the things you love?”

Music was my way of keeping people from looking through and around me. I wanted the heavies to know I was around.

The hungry and the haunted explode in a rock’n’roll band.

Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night.

Outside the street’s on fire in a real death waltz between what’s flesh and what’s fantasy.

Adult life is dealing with an enormous amount of questions that don’t have answers. So I let the mystery settle into my music. I don’t deny anything, I don’t advocate anything, I just live with it.

God have mercy on the man who doubts what he’s sure of.

You’ve got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above.

The future is now. Roll up your sleeves and let your passion flow. The country we carry in our hearts is waiting.

Two hearts are better than one.

I like narrative storytelling as being part of a tradition, a folk tradition.

If they had told me I was the janitor and would have to mop up and clean the toilets after the show in order to play, I probably would have done it.

There have been a lotta tough guys. There have been pretenders. And there have been contenders. But there is only one king.

You can’t shut off the risk and the pain without losing the love that remains.

Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair. The night’s busted open. These two lanes will take us anywhere.

It was like Elvis came along and whispered some dream in everybody’s ear.

Everybody’s got a hungry heart.

If you don’t say what you think then you kill your unborn self.

Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought of duty. To say that it is your duty to love so-and-so is the surest way to cause you to hate him of her.

Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country.

I am in no way supportive of hunting for trophies or sport – would never do it and don’t like it that others do. But if you kill it, then eat it, it’s fine.

Writing anything is a treason of sorts.

You may have killed God beneath the weight of all that you have said; but don’t imagine that, with all that you are saying, you will make a man that will live longer than he.