“To me, life is a wild animal. You hope to deal with it when it leaps at you.”

Songwriting’s a weird game.

If you’ve gotta think about being cool, you ain’t cool.

I’m free of hypochondria– although I’ve got everything else.

Everybody’s got a different way of telling a story – and has different stories to tell.

When I listen to what I did under the influence – 10 years of work – I don’t think it either enhanced or impaired me. It didn’t have that much to do with it.

I’ve never turned blue in someone else’s bathroom. I consider that the height of bad manners.

If you stay up, you get the songs that everyone else misses because they’re asleep.

I have no idea what the audience makes of me.

I mean some doctor told me I had six months to live and I went to their funeral.

But I’ve always felt very comfortable on stage, even if I screw up. It always felt like a dog, this is my turf, piss around it. While I’m here, nothing else can happen. All I can do is screw up. Otherwise, have a good time.

Some things get better with age. Like me.

To a musician or songwriter, your canvas is silence.

One of the great things about songwrighting; it’s not an intellectual experience.

I only get ill when I give up drugs. I don’t have a drug problem, I have a police problem.

We age not by holding on to youth, but by letting ourselves grow and embracing whatever youthful parts remain.

Music is a language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones.