“The piano is just a different animal. It’s expensive, it’s big, it’s heavy, and it doesn’t fit in the mix easily.”

Everybody knows it hurts to grow up…and we’re still fighting it.

I feel like a quote out of context, withholding the rest so I can be for you what you want to see.

Rock and roll is – and should be – a kid’s place.

Because I write very simply, but inside the simplicity, there’s a lot of subtlety. That’s what I’m proud of.

Now that I have found someone, I’m feeling more alone… than I ever have before.

Everyone grew up with a piano in their living room, so rocking out on the piano was accessible – it wasn’t an upper-class thing. Now pianos have become very much a piece of furniture.

A lot of 18-year-olds are like old men. They think they’ve seen everything.

Im really good at writing almost hits.

What stupid f – king idiot gets married a second time if the first time didn’t work out?

I’ve gotten to the point where I realize that I need to tell my truth in music and not walk around blabbing my mind.

It’s a tough thing to know that when you’re making your album, you’re going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.

I want people to listen to my lyrics and be okay with themselves. The people who have it the roughest are homosexuals who come out of the closet.

If you can’t draw a crowd, draw dicks on the wall

I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you.

Off the coast and I’m headed nowhere

I used to do this big rant at the end of some gigs with Ben Folds Five. The band broke into this big heavy metal thing and I started as a joke to scream in a heavy metal falsetto. I found myself saying things like: Feel my pain, I am white, feel my pain.

My audition song is, and has been since 1977, ‘I Love a Piano.

I like writing on piano and a computer, and a lot of ‘Plans’ came out of samples and vocal lines.

Everyone grew up with a piano in their living room, so rocking out on the piano was accessible – it wasn’t an upper-class thing. Now pianos have become very much a piece of furniture.

If anyone can show me … that there is any reason – other than fear – to believe in any version of an afterlife, I’ll give you my piano, one of my legs, and my wife.

Billy Joel and Joe Jackson were both great, and they both play piano.

A guitar riff played on a piano doesn’t come close to the purity of it being played on a guitar but I faked it enough to get by.

I stay glued to my piano and my work. I don’t look up. I write, I produce, I do the next project, I do my job. I don’t look up, and I try to be kind. I try to be kind to people. That’s what I do.

Those edges and turns teach control and discipline, just like finger exercises on the piano.