“Nothing makes you feel more stupid than finding out you were wrong when you thought you were loved.”

Surgery is just stabbing in a courteous environment

Remember you love writing. It wouldn’t be worth it if you didn’t. If the love fades, do what you need to and get it back.

Have more humility. Remember you don’t know the limits of your own abilities. Successful or not, if you keep pushing beyond yourself, you will enrich your own life – and maybe even please a few strangers.

Read. As much as you can. As deeply and widely and nourishingly and ­irritatingly as you can. And the good things will make you remember them, so you won’t need to take notes.

We are not all connected. We are bags of skin. We are all separate bags of thinking skin.

Write. No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write. On you go.

What you’re saying is that ‘I, the superior elite, will take care of you.’ Why? Because, you see, that superior, elite group needs to feel superior and elite. And they can’t be superior and elite unless you have a whole lot of people down there groveling around. So you keep them down there by feeding them.

I do not have any other way of saying it. I think it happens but once and only to the very young when it feels like your skin could ignite at the mere touch of another person. You get to love like that but once.

Put me into a crusader’s armor, a cardinal’s vestments. Let me feel the pygmy’s heartbeat, the queen’s breast, the torturer’s pleasure, the Nile’s taste, or the nomad’s thirst.

I really like The Cars. They’re just so over the top and super pop, but I don’t feel guilty. I’m proud of all the music I listen to.

I feel like I’ve always wanted to live in one place and stay in one place, but I always end up choosing things that make me travel.

It would actually feel forced or unnatural to try to do a different singing style or to try to change my sound completely.

When I go onstage and am performing the way I want to… I finally feel like myself.

I understand that, because there are so many musicians, you have to make artists into brands, but I sometimes feel like I have to be some kind of non-human icon in order for people to listen to my music.