“Videos destroyed the vitality of rock and roll. Before that, music said, “Listen to me.” Now it says, “Look at me.””

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.

There’s nothing better than good sex. But bad sex? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is better than bad sex.

Pat Benatar might need a rock band, but I can just sit with a blues guitar for an hour and a half and do folk songs and great contemporary ballads, and not many people can pull that off.

Elvis might have compromised his musical style a bit towards the end, but that doesn’t mean that artists from the rock n’ roll/folk-roots culture – of which he was not really a part – shouldn’t get better as they get older, like the great jazz or blues artists.

McWorld is a product of popular culture driven by expansionist commerce. Its template is American, its form style. Its goods are as much images as matériel, an aesthetic as well as a product line. It is about culture as commodity, apparel as ideology.

I sold my soul to rock ‘n’ roll.

I put Catholic guilt to work pretty good for a rich rock star.

There was a moment when Prince did rock & roll with a sponge-y seductive sound. I think that’s what was in our head for ‘Get On Your Boots.’ But actually, the song is much more punk rock.

Vision connects you. But it also separates you. In my work, and my life, I feel a desire to merge. Not in terms of losing my own identity… but theres a feeling that life is interconnected, that theres life in stones and rocks and trees and dirt, like there is in us.

Most people get into bands for three very simple rock and roll reasons: to get laid, to get fame, and to get rich.