“The first thing you have to do if you want to raise nice kids, is you have to talk to them like they are people instead of talking to them like they’re property.”

If your children ever find out how lame you really are, they’ll murder you in your sleep.

Anything played wrong twice in a row is the beginning of an arrangement.

One size does not fit all.

It gets harder the more you know. Because the more you find out the uglier everything seems.

The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion.

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

You are what you is, you is what you am, you ain’t what you’re not. So see what you got?

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

All your children are poor unfortunate victims of systems beyond their control

Beware of the fish people, they are the true enemy.

Tobacco is my favorite vegetable.

Music is the most physically inspiring of all the arts.

I don’t want to spend my life explaining myself. You either get it, or you don’t.

Stupidity has a certain charm – ignorance does not.

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

If you pick up a guitar and it says, ‘take me, I’m yours,’ then that’s the one for you.

As a small kid, I came across things like these early Edward Gorey books in department-store bookstores. These were these really unusual objects to me. I didn’t know how they fit into the comic world or into newspaper comics.

I’ve always loved adventure stories that involve brilliant kids using their brains to beat systems that seem unbeatable.

I’d like to help other kids with dyslexia, because I’m dyslexic. It was very hard, and I know that what I went through, other kids are going through.

If we reduced the amount we spend on maintaining our nuclear weapons by a small fraction, we could reallocate those funds to improve kids’ health care and schooling.

I was always into performing and dancing as a kid and acting was a safe place to have all my feelings, which is good as a child.

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

Those things don’t happen today. I feel sorry for the kids in the industry today. They have on sunglasses, eat caviar in jet planes, but they’ll never know the true feeling that we did.

I see the kids and I feel like taking them all away to a safe place to hide until the war stops and the hunger stops and El Cua becomes strong enough to give them the care they deserve.