“For me, songwriting is something like breathing: I just do it. But that doesn’t mean you’re fantastic.”

When you’re young and you play music, you have a peer group, you come out of a scene. There’s a lot of people you know, and then you have some success, and it all goes away.

I’ve been playing music most of my life.

Got no place to go, but there’s a girl waitin’ for me down in Mexico. She got a bottle of tequila, a bottle of gin, and if I bring a little music, I could fit right in.

Time and time again I can’t please myself.

There’s people who think what they need and what they deserve in their lives is a lot worse than what they actually do, so they get themselves involved in things that are needlessly painful: brutal relationships, abusive relationships.

A long December and there’s reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last.

Truth is, you make albums, and some of those songs are hits, and some of the greatest hits albums have songs that weren’t hits.

I’m so busy trying to breathe through the pain that I’m breathing through the pain of being with people, and that is no way to spend a life.

It’s a shame really because a couple days in Oklahoma will open your eyes to how much better it would be if the rest of the country was filled with a few more people from Oklahoma.

Step out the front door like a ghost into the fog where noone notices the contrast of white on white.

You want to embrace, but I can’t figure out how to hold on to it.

I can remember being eight years old and having infinite possibilities. But life ends up being so much less that we thought it would be when we were kids, with relationships that are so empty and stupid and brutal.

When everybody loves me, I will never be lonely.

A lot of life is about how you feel relating to dealing with this person or that person

I’m not a spiritual person at all, but I do think that the world doesn’t have to be as lonely as it is.

If you’ve never stared off into the distance, then your life is a shame.

I write to breathe life back into memory.

I am neither Christian enough nor charitable enough to like anybody just because he is alive and breathing. I want people to interest or amuse me. I want them fascinating and witty or so dul as to be different.

If every moment is sacred and if you are amazed and in awe most of the time when you find yourself breathing and not crazy, then you are in a state of constant thankfulness, worship and humility.

Greed is a basic part of animal nature. Being against it is like being against breathing or eating. It means nothing.

I still perform it in all my shows. I’ll do it as long as I’m breathing. I’m so proud it has stood the test of time.

Acting isn’t a side thing – you have to live and breathe it.

The breath must be enticed or cajoled, like catching a horse in a field, not by chasing after it, but by standing still with an apple in one’s hand.

How to sustain the miracle Of being, that like a muted bell, Or like some ocean-breathing shell, Quivers, intense and still?