When you're just open but not honest, then you start free-associating garbage.

In the quest to be clever, I completely forgot about the people that I love and that love me.

Maybe someday you can accuse somebody of being a poseur by selling out and playing blues music, but that's just not going to happen in my lifetime.

I get recognized somewhere in between like local meteorologist and national meteorologist.

The night I was recognized for 'Daughters' at the Grammys was the night this record started. I knew I had bought the time to learn everything I needed before I started this one. 'Continuum' is not a shot in the dark, it's not a guesstimation.

I just sort of lost my head for a little while.

I've never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, 'We're full.'

It's so interesting how success hits people and how they react to it.

I was very successful from a very early age, and I want to keep it.

I lost my head for a little while.

There's a constantly applicable nature to soul music, whereas sometimes pop music can be a periodical.

I look away at car crashes, and I know people who look away at car crashes, because it makes us uncomfortable to watch other people in pain.

I have the obsessiveness of someone who's a sober, recovering addict displacing his addiction. Except I never had the addiction.

I'm a good music provider, and I'm fine with that. I'm a quality music manufacturer.

I'm very happy in all aspects of my life.

Atlanta's my musical home. It really was the place where I really came alive.

It's almost charity work, what people have done, turning other people on to my music.

I love being the center of attention.

I'm singing what I want to sing based on the emotion of what that day feels like. That's what comes out of my mouth and guitar. That impacts people. They know anything can happen.

People want to see musicians sing things that come from their own mind and own heart in real time, responding to the moment for them.

I'm not deluded enough to think that everyone who knows my name is a listener. You know, I hope that part of that interest - part of that public interest - has to do with me still making records that people like.

I don't write songs in order to stick it to my exes. I don't release underground dis tracks.

I need some kind of emotional stake in it to write my lyrics, assuming that place. It might just be an emotion I understand but am not currently experiencing necessarily.

I'm getting to a point where everything is becoming streamlined in my life. I'm learning how to stand onstage for two hours and play in front of thousands of people as if I am completely in the moment every moment.

Hopefully people can see my music is tethered to my brain.

My fear is that I go up to the girl of my dreams and say 'I'm sorry, but I've got to say hello to you,' and she slides the stool back and gets up and walks away, saying, 'Not for me, Bub. I don't want anything to do with you.'

It's very liberating when you finally realize it's impossible to make everyone like you.

I really don't want to be a hunk.

I may have taken someone through the wringer psychologically, but I've never been sinister.

I don't want to detach. I don't want to go live in a gated community.

If you get half a million, at a certain stage you probably will get 4 million people, if they are able to hear it. The touring thing is unbelievable. It really is amazing from what we did the last tour even to what we are doing now.

Trying to impress my mother with words was one of my favourite pursuits.

I quit the media game. I'm out. I'm done.

You cannot avoid war in life, you cannot avoid the fear of terrorism, you cannot avoid those things now, they are a part of everyday demeanor.

Look, demanding somebody do anything in this day and age is not going to fly.

There are people in the world who have the power to change our values.

I'm the only person I know who's got a bunch of money.

I knew what I wanted to do when I was 13 and I had to go through four years of high school to get out. That's a blessing, because I never had to lay on my bed staring up at the ceiling going, 'What am I going to do with my life?'

I scientifically engineer my music to be as accessible as possible.

I just like collaborating.

People are really concerned with what other people are saying about them.

I wanted everybody to like me. I thought I was one shuck and jive away in every direction.

I don't have anybody telling me what to do.

My hits are not hits.

If you told me I was going to live to 240, I would take 10 years off and try and act. I don't have that kind of time, so I'd much rather stick to playing guitar.

I'm willing to make compromises based on someone I think is the one, but I think it's psychologically important to people when they're famous to be the only famous person they know.

I've learned to appreciate everything that has been given to me.

When you do an interview with me, you're talking to a cheap imitation of the person that I really am. There's no magic in my words, it's just me talking.

I feel strikingly domestic. We're in our own world with two busses and trucks.

Every song I put on a record could be a single and I just pack my bags for it... and the minute it takes off, I'm not gonna be home for a while.