'Billy on the Street' is a persona. It's crafted; it has writers. It's a mixture of performance art and comedy.

I had about five years as a gay guy in New York after college before the whole Grindr explosion happened, where people were still going out to meet each other.

I do take for granted, probably, the fact that I grew up in New York City, one of the most liberal places on earth, with bleeding-heart, liberal parents who took me to see 'Rent' and Terrence McNally plays from a very young age.

Everyone's life experience is different.

The mainstream needs Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O'Donnell. The mainstream needs RuPaul.

I was like a fat, sweaty kid growing up in Queens who just was plopped down in front of 'Entertainment Tonight' by my parents.

I grew up watching 'Saturday Night Live.'

Amy Poehler and I once ambushed people and made them sing Christmas carols with us.

I think there's a fear once things start to blow up - as the people say - that if you stop for a second, it will all go away.

I think that I am working to remind myself that it's still my life... you have to enjoy yourself.

I think 'Billy on the Street' is a big show, but why do a show if you won't make it original and unique and powerful?

You can't be a great comedian without having self-awareness about others or your own faults. You need a strong sense of self and view on the world. That's what great actors have, too.

I knew that I had done my best on 'Tell The Truth'… I was so proud of that record.

I think that 'Tell the Truth' is one of the best rock records ever made by me or anyone - I really do.

I can put on 'Revolver' or 'Led Zeppelin II' and then 'Tell the Truth' and there is no quality gap.

I was good at sports - basketball, football, tennis and dropped them all. At 16, I didn't care about sports anymore.

I always loved music. I liked to go to church because I liked to sing the hymns.

I'm always happy when I'm outside working in the company of nature.

When you're on stage playing, when I plug in a guitar and chord, I'm 16 years old again. I feel the same excitement. It's very overwhelming. It engulfs you.

I was very humbled by the ‘one-man Led Zeppelin' comparisons.

I wouldn't want to end up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as the 'Master of Hip-Hop Samples,' but you take what you can get.

For me, music is this incredibly cerebral trip. You turn on the radio or put on a record, and it's your song, it's what you see.

I'd gone to New York at an early age, and I got beat up a little bit, emotionally. So I thought I'd go home and go to music school.

I'm a huge garden and landscape fanatic.

I'd always envisioned ‘The Big Beat' leading off ‘The Tale of the Tape' with the biggest drumbeat the rock world had ever heard. I knew I had something good… but I had no idea just how good.

I was a mess… It's like ‘Rock Me Tonite' is an MBA course on how a video can go really wrong.

I would never dispute the fact that music is my greatest love.

I got out of the business because I went from being the biggest artist on my record label to someone they didn't even want to have around.

I have a great deal of respect for myself as a musician and a writer, even if I'm not doing it anymore.

Basically, my life was music, and I was always consumed by it.

I tend to be very methodical for a variety of reasons. I'm more of a plodder.

I had great trouble believing in myself, so I didn't believe in my success - I didn't enjoy my success, which I thought was insane.

The whole British music scene of the mid-sixties had a pretty profound effect on me.

British rock & roll became the gospel for American kids like me.

I was always regarded as being better than ninety percent of the kids in school, but I was also something of a loner.

If 'Emotions in Motion' comes out right, I can write the book on the formula rock star.

I'm happier in a garden.

There's this raw, basic quality people expect in my music.

I don't really like fighting.

I'm basically a nice guy.

I don't try to be difficult. I just care so much about these albums that I get crazed sometimes when I'm making them.

I take songwriting very seriously and I wouldn't want anything I do to be construed as frivolous or mundane.

I mean, I would always like to play bigger places and play for more people.

I guess I could sit around and say, 'Gee, I wish I were playing at the Capital Centre tonight instead of Hammerjacks,' but it doesn't happen.

Take 'The Stroke,' for instance. Plenty of people saw sexual connotations in that song but to me it was about what goes on in the business world.

There's a time that you realize that you're not gonna get out of a room without playing certain songs.

I was a good-looking, sexy guy. That certainly didn't hurt in promoting my music.

I have a lot of gay friends.

Becoming a Top Ten artist has surprised me.

I always wanted to merge heavy metal with pop music, but I think that because I grew up more with pop, the Beatles and the Stones, I tended to affiliate myself with those projects.