Certain emotions just take you to the notes - being furious, heroic, sad, erotic, when rain comes.

You can tell everything from the eyes.

I don't see people. I don't see men and women at all. When I see them, I see... their mothers and fathers. I see how old they are inside. Like when I look at the president, or anybody in a record company, or a store owner, I may see a little boy behind the counter with the face of an old man. And that's who I talk to.

I like a spirituality with a God that knows how to drive a car, that knows how to take his girl to the dance club, dance all night, have a little drink, kiss the kid when they come back in and go to sleep. God doesn't need a chauffeur - he needs to drive himself.

They will accuse me of stealing from my father. They already stand in baited judgement, waiting for my first move, waiting to dump their loads of garbage on me.

Kiss me out of desire, but not consolation.

Words are beautiful but restricted. They're very masculine, with a compact frame. But voice is over the dark, the place where there's nothing to hang on: it comes from a part of yourself that simply knows, expresses itself, and is.

I just want to be a guy with a guitar.

Critics... They're like traffic cops. They say what they have to say, then leave, and another guy moves in ,and he has his say - and it's often just the opposite. The result is either critical acclaim or critical murder, and neither has any bearing on my music or direction.

I'm always writing and reflecting on life. I want to suck it all in.

I am very observant of people's character.

The most audacious thing I could possibly state in this day and age is that life is worth living. It's worth being bashed against. It's worth getting scarred by. It's worth pouring yourself over every one of its coals.

I'm concerned with the future. I'm concerned with my life, my present, my friends, people I love, people who love me. I have no intention of taking on a legacy that wasn't bestowed on me.

You can't be, like, smashing guitars against Marshall stacks all the time. As a matter of fact, after a while, it just looks like posing - it never really gets down to any message or any real expression.

My personal aesthetic is to be affected directly by everything about what you're seeing... I don't mind being dashed on the rocks... My most base act of defiance is to live a long time and still rock.

Maybe someday, I'll just make, like, a complete on-demand record that everybody wants to hear. But that would be impossible and, also, I just changed my mind. I don't think I'll ever do that.

I have a lot of my mother in me, but I was just born with the same parts as my father. I don't sound like him. I mean, I can do an impression of him right now, and I do not sound like him. I sound like me. My sense of rhythm I learned from my mother. My melodies, I think sometimes, I get from my mother.

A tune has to resonate with whatever is happening around it.

There are thousands of great artists that wouldn't be doing the same kind of work if there were no music business machine. The ones who are popular would be doing much different work, too. Michael Bolton would be pumping gas.

The people who raised me musically are my mother, who is a classically trained pianist, and my stepfather.

Life's too short and too complicated for people behind desks, people behind masks to be ruining other people's lives, initiating force against other people's lives on the basis of their income, their color, their class, their religious beliefs, whatever.

I don't choose the songs; the songs choose me.

Music was like my first real toy. I was an only child for a while, and I was alone a lot of the time - and I liked it. I still like being alone.

I don't see myself in an ivory tower.

Thinking so hard on her soft eyes and memories of the signs that it's over. It's over.

I just think too much sometimes.

To young to hold on and to old to just break free and run.

I became a human jukebox, learning all these songs I'd always known, discovering the basics of what I do. The cathartic part was in the essential act of singing. When is it that the voice becomes an elixir? It's during flirting, courtship, sex. Music's all that.

I sacrificed my anonymity for my father, whereas he sacrificed me for his fame.

The words come from here. From memories, from dreams, from people I've known. I'm always writing and reflecting on life. I want to suck it all in.

I've always liked the electric guitar better. Even though the acoustic can be a very sexy and mysterious instrument, I can go to way more places with an electric.

Maybe I'm not a good enough artist that people just think of me. Maybe in the future, I'll bloom into something that will just make people look at me for what I am.

I once tried to sing jazz for real. But jazz didn't do it for me. You can't have jazz without a jazz world, which doesn't exist anymore.

I don't want my reputation to take me over, I just want to be judged on my songs. I want people to come and see me because they want to, not because fashion dictates it.

I don't really go on what people say so much; I go on their voice. I go on their energy at the time. I go on how close their arms are folded into their chest.

I just let the emotion dictate what the arrangement is.

I do like structure, and I'd love to be better at it.

I think that all people are many people. I think all people have many, many, many different souls inside, and they just shift from one to the other.

'Grace' is basically a death prayer. Not something of sorrow, but of just casting away any fear of death. No relief will come - you really just have to stew in your life until it's time to go. But sometimes, somebody else's faith in you can do wonders.

When I sing, my face changes shape. It feels like my skull changes shape... the bones bend.

The thing about a music career is that it ain't over until the fat lady sings. Look at all the times people threw in the towel on Dylan - or Neil Young. Remember when Young was doing things in the '80s like 'Trans' and the rockabilly album and being completely lambasted by critics who now think he is wonderful again?

The only goal is in the process. The process is in the thing with little flashes of light: those are the gigs, the live shows... it's the life in between. That's all I've got.

I disoriented myself from everything about being a human being and just played and played and played and sang and sang and sang.

I figured if I played in the no-man's land of intimacy, I would learn to be a performer.

I've already created my own thing.

I'm convinced I got signed because of who I am. And it makes me sad.

I made a statement all my own.

I resent the fact that a parental warning sticker has to be included on an album as cover art. To me that's censorship.

I've always felt that the quality of the voice is where the real content of a song lies. Words only suggest an experience, but the voice is that experience.

The Smiths hasn't been equaled. That goes for the composition of the songs, the lyrics, and the performance.