“I see the winos talking to themselves and I can understand.”

I didn’t have this rebellious streak in me. To me, I’m a product of circumstance.

Spiritual life is like living water that springs up from the very depths of our own spiritual experience. In spiritual life everyone has to drink from his or her own well.

After staring at origami directions long enough, you sort of become one with them and start understanding them from the inside.

Do what you love, and you’ll always love what you do

You’re so ahead of yourself That you forfeit what you need Though you can see when you’re wrong

I’m writing for the sake of writing music. Whether it gets heard or not isn’t an issue for me. It keeps my own juices going and my mind active.

Don’t make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money.

I’m in a New York state of mind

Usually when I’m writing, I try to write fairly quickly. If a song sits around too long, it starts to take on a stink.

You’ve given me the best of you, but now I need the rest of you.

This is our moment, here at the cross-roads of time. Time is relentless and as the past dissappears, we’re on the verge of all things new.

As an atheist you have to rationalize things… Then you have to try and make some sort of sense out of your problems. And if you try and find you can’t, you have no choice but to be good and scared — but that’s okay!

My songs are like my kids.

There’s nothing better than good sex. But bad sex? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is better than bad sex.

Don’t go changing, to try and please me You never let me down before.

Remember how I found you there alone in your electric chair, I told you dirty jokes until you smiled.

To discover the depth of darkness, you have to speak your mind out loud and be willing to be seen as crazy in the eyes of people because insanity is a duende moving darkness aside, showing what’s behind the black curtains.

We like to see death as an unfair conspiracy, and what we want is a magic practitioner, a combination of Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes.

Of all the calamities to which humanity is subject, none is so dreadful as insanity. … All experience shows that insanity seasonably treated is as certainly curable as a cold or a fever.

I do like taking stuff seriously that a lot of people look at as nonsense. I enjoy the insanity of that. And I like the commitment that is needed for that.

So many people are insanely busy nowadays, and it’s easy to say, ‘Ah, I’ll workout tomorrow.’ But you have to set aside a time and stick to that schedule.

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.

Insanity is a legal term. Crazy is an art form.

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.