“I’ll be making music ’til the day I die. I’ve done all kinds of stuff, and more is coming.”

Eventually you’ll take the phrases and rhythm patterns you’ve copped and begin to put your own mark on them.

Practice. I used to sit on the edge of my bed with a six-pack of Tuborg. My brother would go out to party and get laid, come home at 3am., and I would still be playing with myself.

The one thing I do have is good ears. I don’t mean perfect pitch, but ears for picking things up. I developed my ear through piano theory, but I never had a guitar lesson in my life, except from Eric Clapton off of records.

I’m just a normal schmo like anyone else.

I’ve had a hip replacement, I’ve beaten cancer, I had my hand operation, and I stopped drinking. Something inside of me just went, ‘I’m done.’

Everything comes to me while I’m sitting on the pot.

I grew up on a lot of early Beatles, DC5, Cream, Clapton, Page, Beck and Hendrix.

Nirvana was huge, but it didn’t appeal to everyone.

Best believe that needle hurt you Best to see these true colors Than follow one of your false virtues A little secret to make you think: Why is the crazy stuff we never say, poetry in ink?

The name Van Halen, the family legacy, is going to go on long after I’m gone.

The piano is a universal instrument. If you start there, learn your theory and how to read, you can go on to any other instrument.

I boil the strings so they stretch.

There are really three parts to the creative process. First there is inspiration, then there is the execution, and finally there is the release.

The stainless-steel frets were a major breakthrough, because of the amount of playing and bending that I do. I have to get my guitars refretted every couple of months.

Rock stars come and go. Musicians play until they die.

I think Clapton is brilliant. He’s the only one who moved me. The only one who made me want to play the guitar.

We do not die because we have to die; we die because one day, and not so long ago, our consciousness was forced to deem it necessary.

I would imagine there are days when Superman wakes up, glances at his cape, and wonders when someone will come save him.

I thought [when I was 16] my days were just going to be spent hanging out on a beach and my girlfriend was going to be Miss Teen USA and my best friend will be a dolphin.

Once I came to acting, it was almost a thing where there weren’t enough hours in the day to work on stuff because I was so passionate about it.

You always take a little bit back with you at the end of the day. I always put a little bit of myself into the characters, too.

You don’t know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word.

His folly has not fellow Beneath the blue of day That gives to man or woman His heart and soul away.

The Bible talks a lot about thankfulness, and I’m more thankful than I ever was. I try to concentrate on the hundreds of things that go right in a day, instead of the three or four that go wrong.