“You’re going to have more rejection than acceptance.”

One other thing, if it’s possible, as songwriters, you should also develop yourself as record producers.

There’s so much fear involved in trying to do something you don’t know how to do that drugs and alcohol can become a big part of your life if you have an addictive personality or are very unsure, which most songwriters are.

I think that most writers who wait until they’re inspired to write are just waiting for the fear to subside.

I get a different kind of lyric from someone else that might make me go in a different musical direction.

I also used to work in the Catskill Mountains as a bus boy, and I performed in talent shows.

It’s amazing how a competitive nature can turn a negative into something positive.

It’s very hard to teach someone how to write a song if to begin with there’s no creative crop to harvest.

You have to be very brave in that first writing session.

Probably most successful songwriters have an innate songwriting ability.

No matter what you do, you’ll never run away from you.

If I waited for inspiration every time I sat down to write a song I probably would be a plumber today.

I quit college. I was studying architecture for about a year.

Cynthia’s lyrics always expressed the feelings people felt but they couldn’t express themselves.

I know at the beginning of our careers, my wife and I were gut wrenchingly competitive.

You have certain writing tools but generally creating something from nothing makes one quite mad and Cynthia and I are quite mad you know.

I’ve written songs sober and I’ve written songs high.

The great human problem of evil stems from the illusion of separateness. Whenever this illusion is overcome, we behave lovingly to one another.

But to be the best, you must face the best. And to overcome your fear, you must deal with the best.

The best way to overcome fear is to face with equanimity the situation of which one is afraid.

The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower.

I definitely have managed to overcome dyslexia now to become a fully functional human being but things were a lot more difficult when I was younger.

I feel like every project that I’ve been doing, I’ve learned something about myself. It’s like I’ve cracked something, or my vision of myself has gotten wider.

I’m just learning and growing, and overcoming the fear.

Overcoming the negative through the positive, science, mathematics, faith, facts, and the wonders of God, whether we call him Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh, or Jah.