“Sometimes I feel I know strangers Better than I know my friends Why must a beginning Be the means to an end? The stones from my enemies These wounds will mend But I cannot survive The roses from my friends.”

That happens every time I get behind a guitar, regardless of what I’m saying, ’cause music is freedom and being free is the closest I’ve ever felt to being spiritual.

We’ve all got stardust in our bones.

If I’m inspired and music inspires me, then I will continue to play it.

I write songs and I sing them from the deepest part of my existence and I hope they connect with the deepest part of yours.

When you have everything, you have everything to lose.

But I would never insult the people that love this music and I would never insult the blessing of music in my life and I would never insult myself by playing uninspired music.

I grew up with the Blind Boys’ music. My family owns a music store in Claremont, California, called The Claremont Folk Music Center. I grew up with a heavy diet of gospel, folk, and blues because those are kind of the cornerstones of traditional American music.

Every man’s actions belong to him.

There’s no love like a lost love and no pain like a broken heart.

I get diminishing returns when I bore myself in an interview.

I’m more afraid of falling than I am of flying high. I’m not as scared of dying as I am of growing old. Every battle has its glory and its consequence.

My choice is what I choose to be.

My choice is what I choose to do and if I’m causing no harm it shouldn’t bother you. Your choice is who you choose to be and if you’re causin’ no harm, then your alright with me.

My main concern when travelling around the world is finding a place to skateboard!

My band is the best band in the world, period. So, I insist on every song being better than it is on the record. So by the end of the tour, we have to be playing the song better than how it’s recorded.

It turns out that there is something more magnificent than nature. It’s love.

… we have gratefully to receive from the hand of God the institution of the state with its magistrates as a means of preservation….

When they saw you kneeling, crying words you mean. Opening their eyeballs, eyeballs, pretending that your Al Green, Al Green.

I define “grindin'” as just nonstop work! Nonstop work, nonstop progress. Can’t sleep during that grind – I mean, you get a little bit of it, but if you’re progressin’ at every hour, every second, you are grindin’.

To a woman–I mean, a nice woman–there is no such thing as men. There is a man; and either she is so fond of him that she can talk of nothing else, however unfavourably, or so much in love with him that she never mentions his name.

Keep focused on the substantive issues. To make a decision means having to go through one door and closing all others.

Moving away from “useful” doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary. You can still need poetry while also needing money or food or physical health.

The more I am aware of my mortality the better person I am and the better I am at choosing a life that is aware of its beauty.

The need of the hour is that your life should be revolutionised.