“Why would I want to sound like Joni Mitchell? I’ve got Joni Mitchell records, and they’re great, and I couldn’t possibly be that good.”

Everyone grew up with a piano in their living room, so rocking out on the piano was accessible – it wasn’t an upper-class thing. Now pianos have become very much a piece of furniture.

A lot of 18-year-olds are like old men. They think they’ve seen everything.

Im really good at writing almost hits.

What stupid f – king idiot gets married a second time if the first time didn’t work out?

I’ve gotten to the point where I realize that I need to tell my truth in music and not walk around blabbing my mind.

It’s a tough thing to know that when you’re making your album, you’re going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.

I want people to listen to my lyrics and be okay with themselves. The people who have it the roughest are homosexuals who come out of the closet.

If you can’t draw a crowd, draw dicks on the wall

I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you.

Off the coast and I’m headed nowhere

I used to do this big rant at the end of some gigs with Ben Folds Five. The band broke into this big heavy metal thing and I started as a joke to scream in a heavy metal falsetto. I found myself saying things like: Feel my pain, I am white, feel my pain.

I look to an out gay man or woman as pretty much what I would aspire to. The strength that it takes to do that and the floodgates that open and what they pay for it.

I always feel very lucky that I am forced to make records at certain times. If I was forced to make 2 records a year, I would write twice as many songs. I can’t make myself finish something unless I am forced

Some people would say they never see me because I don’t go anywhere. I stay in the blue state of Nashville, in my bubble.

I don’t leave my neighborhood. I don’t go anywhere. There are four blocks I live in and there are two coffee shops, one at each end of the block… so I don’t do much driving…

Billy Joel and Joe Jackson were both great, and they both play piano.

I think making a movie or a record, the best things happen by accident – and those end up being the magic. Every time I’ve followed my gut it’s been better than when I’ve tried to do what I was supposed to do.

I’ve been trying to make records and I describe it almost like a “movie for your ears” where it’s a little unconventional in its shape and form, but there’s something that’s intriguing in keeping you wanting to wait and see the next frame of film, except in here what’s coming around the corner for your ears.

I didn’t have a lot to do with the first record.

Every country I’ve had different hit records, so we have to change the set to fit the country.

I feel like making music because – and this has much to do with the way I was able to make this record – there’s more of myself in it.

I think these days, as an artist, you have to be slightly entrepreneurial. …Nobody really sells records anymore.

You don’t have to look a certain way to have a hit record.

The first records I heard were from Dizzy Gillespie and people like that.