“The first thing that inspires any song is a chord progression. When I have one I really like, I get into the lyrics even more.”

I’ve been interested in that subject matter, like lots of people. Perhaps foolishly, I’ve allowed some of that stuff to creep into my music.

We sing some song that we made up but I don’t want to make a record like that.

When we’ve got something to say to the world, we will. I’m really happy that people are interested. “So, what’s up with the Pixies record? So, what’s up with the Pixies record?”

I listen to Neil Young and jazz and classical stations and, if my girlfriend’s driving, it tends to be Hall & Oates.

A lot of my heroes are artists and a lot of my musical heroes have an artistic side.

That’s the most important thing, to get along with people. When you feel like you click with them.

I have always been a singer, a writer, and a musician, not as a prodigy or as in a trade handed to me by my parents, but because of an inner voice or maybe a command from beyond reality as it is usually defined.

Bob Dylan is quite a songwriter, and a great singer and musician. I won’t bother with comparing myself to him, but I will say that I heard his records at a very young age and I still listen to all his records.

I don’t like to have everything all worked out in my head because there’s always a chance of it coming out different than you think it should anyway.

I think everybody has a painter inside of them somewhere.

I have had UFO experiences, and yet, at the same time, I can easily be convinced that none of it is true. It’s hard to say whether or not you’re a believer.

It’s obvious you shouldn’t steal, kill or be cruel.

I don’t want to do children’s music. I write kids songs, but the kids songs I write are for my kids – like when I’m putting them to bed.

I’m always looking to rock out. But it isn’t really about rocking out versus being mellow, in terms of your personal satisfaction. In the end, you just want to be good.

When I think about that I get stimulated and excited. It’s a feeling that you can’t label with words.

You think you’ve made something really great, but there’s a reason why it’s not resonating the way some previous work did. But it’s not that easy to just replicate.

There are bad types and good types, and the whole science and art of typography begins after the first category has been set aside.

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

The moral man is he who is opposed to injustice per se, opposed to injustice wherever he finds it; the moral man looks for injustice first of all in himself.

It is an agreeable and yet a painful sense of novelty to stand for the first time in the midst of a people whose language and manners are different from one’s own.

You don’t have to get it right the first time.

If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman… because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.

There is more credit and satisfaction in being a first-rate truck driver than a tenth-rate executive.

If you can learn to convey what you express in the first rough sketch, you’re really saying what you need to say in that.