When people hold you in high esteem, it's very delicate relationship. When they meet you they're putting all their chips up. It's make or break.

Pizza makes me think that anything is possible.

You must never lower yourself to being a person you don't like.

I don't believe in fate or destiny. I believe in various degrees of hatred, paranoia, and abandonment. However much of that gets heaped upon you doesn't matter - it's only a matter of how much you can take and what it does to you.

Maybe I'm just a psycho, and the stage is a better place to go than either the loony bin or somewhere else.

In winter, I plot and plan. In spring, I move.

Now, if someone wants to spit on me, I just roll up the window of my BMW 540i.

When you start to doubt yourself the real world will eat you alive.

There is not one single police officer in America that I am not afraid of and not one that I would trust to tell the truth or obey the laws they are sworn to uphold. I do not believe they protect me in any way.

I like boring black and white films with subtitles. I'm basically a drip.

I have come to the conclusion that it's a waste of time to have too much pride in anything. Perhaps it's good to have a sense of duty, a jealous zeal to protect or improve, but pride ultimately is only that which stands vulnerable to offense and degradation.

I just travel the world with my backpack and my cameras and a bunch of Clif bars.

If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light, If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.

I love capitalism. It rewards me for being brave - it awards me for being innovative and thinking out of the box.

The first Van Halen album makes Johnny Rotten out to be what he really was and still is: a hairdresser.

Having an identity is one thing. Being born into an identity is quite a different matter.

Life will not break your heart. It'll crush it.

To this day, my haircut is the number two clippers, which I apply to myself every month.

I think young people should travel and travel often to other countries... like I do.

Never once have I thought that Social Security would be something that would ever be available to me.

Lou Reed's music has been in the lives of millions of people all over the world for decades. He had a truly universal presence and was respected by musicians across all genres.

Consumerism is at once the engine of America and simultaneously one of the most revealing indicators of our collective shallowness.

Contemporary bands often will do tour-only releases pressed and sold only in Australia. Crikey!

The only thing about sanctions is that, like a lot of drone strikes, there are countless unintended victims. Cutting off aid to Uganda only increases the pain there.

I think, to a great degree, we humans still divide ourselves into two species, even though we are monotypic. There are males and females. We see them as different and not equal.

I'm actually on the Twitter like all those crazy young kids are, and if I'm going to do an in-store appearance or I post something on my website, I tweet these followers, a word I don't like so much, and over 50,000 people go, like, 'Okay, I got it.'

When a young non-white male is stopped and searched at the whim of a police officer, his idea of personal space, privacy and self esteem are shattered, to say nothing of his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment protections. The damage goes deep quickly and stays. Stop & frisk, as well as a tactic, is also an incitement.

I'm most in my element on tour, with a gig that day, like today. I'm on the road where I am supposed to be. I will be where I'm supposed to be at nighttime, on stage, in front of people, doing my thing.

Motivation has always been a fascinating factor when considering a touring artist, especially when the years stack up. What keeps one out there year after year?

I don't know if music has ever achieved anything past appealing to the people that it appeals to. If a song could stop a war, then Bob Marley and Bob Dylan songs would have stopped one or two.

Ramones music has a Pavlovian effect on me - the song starts, and the world blurs around the sound.

Citizens United didn't work. Hey, Koch brothers, Karl Rove, Shellgame Adelson: Democracy trumps money sometimes.

I'm not harmful, just introspective. You can probably think I'm weird, but it's not harmful weird.

It's one thing to buy a copy of 'Atlas Shrugged.' You actually have to read it to get anything out of it.

Some people see Black Friday as a much-needed break for their wallet. I see it as retail outlets showing the customers the full weight of their contempt. The frenzy to buy cheap crap from China, the human downgrade of people fighting with each other over items they can probably live without, to me, is an insult.

All my big heroes are literary, writers.

I was very lucky to have had the opportunity to tour with the Beastie Boys and watched almost every set they played on all those dates. Why not? You do your set and then you get to see the Beasties play? Best deal in town.

I'd like to talk to Arnold Schwarzenegger, 'cause I live in California and I just want to see that canned, chemical filled body in my office.

I would like to become a better photographer. I'm working on that.

'Duck Dynasty' is a ridiculous show, and long may it wave. America and democracy will endure. They've seen a lot worse.

If American forces leave Afghanistan, the Taliban is going to do what to America? Don't say you're worried about what they will do to the Afghan people. If that was America's concern, America's operational presence there would be much different.

Fish is the only kind of respirating thing that I consume. Everything else I don't want any part of.

Before the Civil War, the Southern states were selling a lot of cotton to England and didn't seem to mind British occupation. By and large, the Revolutionary War wasn't at all great for business.

Most poets are elitist dregs more concerned with proving their skill with a dictionary than communicating ideas with impact.

In the summer of '84, you just couldn't escape the Born in the USA record.

As a young person, I wanted everyone to agree with me.

If there is one set of laws, one Constitution for every citizen, its protections hopefully applied equally to all, then why do the results seem to differ so radically? What do you call that? Look around - you're living in it.

As performers grow older, I reckon there are two ways they can go. They can either be up there, playing more deeply from their guts than ever, or they can be phoning it in so crassly that it leaves a lump in your throat as you leave the venue at the end of the show.

When a band becomes as truly iconic as the Velvet Underground, there will often be a box set released, overburdened with mediocre material that dilutes what was fine left on its own.

You want to meet a bunch of really friendly people? Go to a Slayer concert. There'll be some real psychos there, but most of those people will take care of each other.