“As a musician or a performer, you’re meant to know what you’re about, but it’s ridiculous that someone 14 would have any idea of what they’re about.”

There are moments where, as a performer, you’re on stage and you feel like you’re exactly where you’re meant to be in the universe. It’s a rare and beautiful thing when it happens.

I’ve tried to make music that’s more universal, but for me, it’s most successful emotionally when it’s most specific to what I’m going through.

In the silence, hear what can’t be heard.

There’s a great expression that says, “God is a jealous lover,” and it’s a very accurate expression that has nothing to do with whatever you see god or nature as.

There are a lot of artists who have gotten pretty caught up in that. That’s why I like the defeatist attitude. Just assume that no one is going to like it and that no one cares, and you’ll end up making something that you really like.

If I feel really authentically in my body, then everything seems to click. But, sometimes I can only get into that, if the atmosphere is already conducive to that with the sound and all that stuff.

One of the biggest and most pleasant surprises is that, even when you have that need to keep up an appearance of being right or knowing, there is life after admitting you don’t know and that’s beautiful.

The moments when I first made something, like when I first wrote a song please me so intensely. Everything else after that is just the act of communication.

The moments when I first made something, like when I first wrote a song please me so intensely. Everything else after that is just the act of communication.

I like albums where all the songs are written in one go. If you’re trying to create the number-one album with the best songs ever,

Imitate the sun. Don’t worry if people understand you. Just shine shine shine.

I get why you’d want to write for three years and pick the best ones, but for me, I’d rather hear a group of songs that are all expressing a state, or time of your life. I think it’s more that.

Interviewers have to be work really hard to be good. They¹re more inclined to be bad. Generally, they can go either way, but interviewing on a whole isn¹t such a useful thing. I¹m not a big fan of (interviews), really.

I watch a lot of TV and I got some new hair products.

Audiences tend to dig the earlier stuff by any given musician, and the artists themselves always tend to prefer the thing that they’re doing now.

I wanted to get my recording and become a musician again, work; with other people, do that kind of thing because I kind of got away from that for a while once we started happening, you know, selling records, sold out concerts.

If you want to be a doctor, a lawyer you must go to college. But if you want to be a musician or such, study your craft. Study music.

You’re always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that’s maybe even too weird for your own taste.

You really have to work hard and diligently. Sometimes actors can be lazy and get away with it, but you can’t do that if you’re a musician.

I’m not a jazz singer.

[Louis Armstrong] was the only musician who ever lived, who can’t be replaced by someone.

There’s not like this separate caste system where it’s like, “I’m the musician, you’re the audience. Never the two shall meet.” It was a case where it was like, “Hey, you know what? I’m on your level, man.”