“Children make up the best songs, anyway. Better than grown-ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don’t care if they lose it; they’ll just make another one.”

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.

New York forces you to be in endless surreal situations.

I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We’re all looking at the wrapping. But we won’t tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath.

The trick is to have a career and have a family. It’s like having two dogs that hate each other and you have to take them for a walk every night.

The best computer is a man, and it’s the only one that can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.

We live in the best of all possible worlds.

Aspire, break bounds. Endeavor to be good, and better still, best.

The best Maxim I know in this life is, to drink your Coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it.

Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses.

I work myself into the ground. But I think I’m a nice friend and a good person, and I try to do my work as best I can.

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

I’m a work in progress, but if I know in my heart that I’m doing my best, that my heart’s in the right place, that I have unconditional love, I feel okay.