“There’s a deep-seated paranoia that Americans have about not being Americans or something.”

Slow down you’re doing fine You can’t be everything you want to be Before your time Although it’s so romantic on the borderline tonight Too bad but it’s the life you lead

We never could have come this far I took the good times, I’ll take the bad times I’ll take you just the way you are Don’t go trying some new fashion Don’t change the color of your hair. […] I could not love you any better I love you just the way you are.

I compare songwriting to childbirth. How many kids can you have before your uterus explodes?

I didn’t have this rebellious streak in me. To me, I’m a product of circumstance.

Spiritual life is like living water that springs up from the very depths of our own spiritual experience. In spiritual life everyone has to drink from his or her own well.

After staring at origami directions long enough, you sort of become one with them and start understanding them from the inside.

Do what you love, and you’ll always love what you do

You’re so ahead of yourself That you forfeit what you need Though you can see when you’re wrong

I’m writing for the sake of writing music. Whether it gets heard or not isn’t an issue for me. It keeps my own juices going and my mind active.

Don’t make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money.

I’m in a New York state of mind

Usually when I’m writing, I try to write fairly quickly. If a song sits around too long, it starts to take on a stink.

You’ve given me the best of you, but now I need the rest of you.

This is our moment, here at the cross-roads of time. Time is relentless and as the past dissappears, we’re on the verge of all things new.

As an atheist you have to rationalize things… Then you have to try and make some sort of sense out of your problems. And if you try and find you can’t, you have no choice but to be good and scared — but that’s okay!

My songs are like my kids.

The ultimate meltdown was Britney Spears. But she (Spears) can’t hold a conversation. No.

They have someone who feeds her what she is supposed to say. Like she can’t hold a conversation.

How can life be worth living, if devoid Of the calm trust reposed by friend in friend? What sweeter joy than in the kindred soul, Whose converse differs not from self-communion?

Some conversations feel like a hug. Some people feel like home.

I miss people I have never met. Conversations I have never had. Streets I’ve never walked. And love I have never made.

Spiritual people are not those who engage in certain spiritual practices; they are those who draw their life from a conversational relationship with God.

That first justification given, again, the White House misleading the country about a major action the administration was taking, but the fact that they had a private conversation in which the president,

Romance like a ghost escapes touching; it is always where you are not, not where you are. The interview or conversation was prose at the time, but it is poetry in the memory.