“There’s always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby.”

For a songwriter, you don’t really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they’re made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.

All that you’ve loved is all you own.

I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.

My wife called me a mule. She once said, “I didn’t marry a man; I married a mule!” I kept thinking about it. It was in the back of my head. I think it makes a good title for an album.

You’re innocent when you dream.

I’ve always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there.

I always thought songs are movies for the ears and films are like songs for the eyes.

Time is just memory Mixed in with Desire.

Well, it’s either kiss me or kill me, that’s how I see it.

I don’t think that you should be per­fectly candid and frank about the intimate details of your personal life with the public at large. Subsequently, it creates consider­able personal problems.

I guess I’ve always lived upside down when I want things I can’t have.

I sold a quart of blood and bought a half a pint of scotch.

I can’t listen to so much music at the same time. I think you really have to have a diet. You’re just processing too much, there’s no place to put it. If you go a long time without hearing music, then you hear music that nobody else hears.

When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now I am older, I am not quite so sure.

We are all just monkeys with money and guns.

I dunno when I started writing really. I was, like, filling out applications and stuff real early. Last name first, first name last, sex. ‘occasionally’ , stuff like that. Then I was writing letters, filling out forms, writing on bathroom walls.

I must be careful not to get trapped in the past. That’s why I tend to forget my songs.

The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.

Don’t fall into the trap of studying the Bible without doing what it says.

I’m a bird trapped in a self-made cage.

Your future is not ahead of you, it’s trapped within you.

You can cage the songbird, but you can’t make her sing. And you can trap the free bird, but you’ll have to clip her wings.

Sometimes it is the spider that feels trapped in the very web she weaves.

I don’t like the trappings of stardom. I wear the shoes and the Dolce & Gabbana, because I’m told to. But I’m not trapped by it.