“Oh, I’m not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.”

I like Thelonious Monk, he’s so gnarled, he’s like a piece of machinery that’s pulled up the bolts on the floor and gone off on its own.

The dog won’t bite if you beat Him with a bone.

And the earth died screaming, while I lay dreaming.

Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.

I put food on the table and roof overhead. But I’d trade it all tomorrow for the highway instead.

I’m not fighting for justice. I am not fighting for freedom. I am fighting for my life and another day in the world here.

Bill Hicks – blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer, and brain specialist. He will correct your vision. Others will drive on the road he built.

Well I got a bad liver and broken heart, yeah, I drunk me a river since you tore me apart.

I think all songs should have weather in them. Names of towns and streets, and they should have a couple of sailors. I think those are just song prerequisites.

Not the kind of wheel you fall asleep at.

A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn’t.

Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers.

We have a deficit of wonder right now.

If there’s one thing you can say about mankind, there’s nothing kind about man.

Songs are really just very interesting things to be doing with the air.

I’m always looking for sounds that are pleasing at the time. The sound of a helicopter is really annoying until you’re drowning, and it’s there to rescue you. Then it sounds like music.

I have seen so many bands and musicians fade away, especially the ones in my early days that treated me and my bands with contempt for no other reason than that they were headlining the show, not all though, with great exceptions such as Slade and Vinegar Joe.

The magic of playing has to do with how much everyone wants it to succeed.

If you have five players in a situation where the music is being improvised and one is determined it is not going to succeed, it won’t succeed even if one of the musicians takes control.

William Blake is my favorite poet of all time, and he said that he wasn’t quite familiar with the sounds of music. If so, he would have been a musician.

You can have all sorts of relationships, but there’s something with musicians working together where you can have relationship that can just continue to grow in a beautiful way.

You might have asked [about skill] of an artist or a musician or whatever… but with me it just happens.

Too many young musicians today want to win polls before they learn their instruments.

Laughing and crying are really similar – what happens to your body. It’s a very similar process in your diaphragm. Like a musician, you have to do your scales once in a while and warm up your voice.