“I wept heartily over this poor little deceased soul. It was the first sentient being I had ever killed. I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain. I was sixteen years old, a harmless boy, bookish and religious, and now I had blood on my hands. It’s a terrible burden to carry. All sentient life is sacred.”

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.

If I have more creativity that I want to get out of me, I try to find other ways than pursuing solo records so much.

This is a particular thing, you know, catholic stories of martyrs who had their head removed and then continued to be miraculous in the last moments of their life.

That’s more important even then what their background is or what they’ve done before, how good they are, how new they are or whatever. All that stuff is really secondary to just getting along with the person.

You should never rely on interviews with musicians as being factual.

Raising five boys is a handful, trust me.

Thomas Jefferson-another gorgeous white boy who would not have been interested in me. This was my problem in a nutshell. To get some play in Charlottesville, you had to be either a Martha Jefferson or a Sally Hemings.

The boy’s got a lot to learn and I’ve got a lot to teach.

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

I wanted very much to be Miles Davis when I was a boy, but without the practice. It just looked like an endless road.

My son, George, has been a bad, bad boy! Right, George?

As a boy, I believed freedom for America meant freedom for me. There was a time I believed every word spoken.

I’m so scared girls look at my breast implants and think, ‘To get boys, you need big boobs.’ I tell them, ‘Don’t get it done. Those fears go away. You develop other insecurities, but breasts aren’t one of them.’ I want to get them half-size.