"You've got to discover you, what you do, and trust it."

"Art does not exist only to entertain -- but also to challenge one to think, to provoke, even to disturb, in a constant search for the truth."

"Issues of foreign policy have a place in every election for President."

"I'm not weird, just different from people who aren't different."

"I go by instinct - i don't worry about experience."

"When I was a teenager in New York, I was buying antique clothes. I still am."

"Art does not exist only to entertain, but also to challenge one to think, to provoke, even to disturb, in a constant search for truth."

"I always loved art shows at schools. My friends with kids would go, and I would go with them. It's some of my favorite art... It's more about creativity than the grand statement of an agenda."

"I'm a musician. I'm not, like, a personality. I've never really pretended to perform that kind of function."

"If we look at the fact that record covers are essentially advertisements for the music, we acknowledge a function and purpose to draw in the prospective buyer."

"I'm really fascinated by lingos and colloquialisms that are outmoded and have gone by the wayside. I love the way people spoke in the '30s, and the amazing slang of the mid-'60s and '70s."

"I didn't go to high school. I never felt connected to people my age."

"Usually, the music inspires the lyrics. The lyrics just sort of fall off like a bunch of crumbs from the melody. That's all I want them to be - crumbs. I don't want to work any kind of fabricated message."

"In recording, you're trying to make something work sonically - getting the right inflection on the right guitar sound - and maybe a part that would be musically great doesn't sound as cool."

"Studying music in a conservatory would be stifling for me, although I respect people who can do it. And by no means am I an expert at notating music or music theory - that's not really my world."

"Something just happens when you're making a record, where certain things start to come out. It's just something in the air."

"When I was a kid and putting out my first records, there was a lot made out of the fact that the '50s/'60s generation was so dominant."

"What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight."

"They are like the clue in the labyrinth, or the compass in the night"

"The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress."

"The mind conceives with pain, but it brings forth with delight."

"Does talent have any need of passions? Yes, of many passions - repressed."

"Space is the stature of God."

"You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you."

"Words are like eyeglasses they blur everything that they do not make clear."

"Words, like glasses, obscure everything which they do not make clear."

"There's never any pressure on the music having to be something."

"I didn't want to be on a major label. I wanted all the attention and the noise to go away because I wanted to be something a little bit more substantial."

"I feel like I've spent the majority of my time touring and traveling, so if I reduced the actual time making music, it's probably four and a half years at the most."

"There's more things that I'd like to do. You know, each song is a little bit of a puzzle. I see most of them as just failed attempts."

"I have heard some stuff that might be influenced by my records, but it's usually pretty wacky and off-the-wall, which is kind of annoying, to be frank."

"Every band I knew or played with had flyers and properly-recorded demos and contacts; I couldn't even get a gig."

"Being able to take musical ideas through every iteration is attractive to me. Granted, not everyone's going to want to listen to that, but it should exist."

"I've personally reached the point where the sound of MP3s are so uncompelling, because so much is lost in translation."

"You can't meditate on walking or certain human habits. You concentrate too much on the way you walk, and you'll start walking pretty weird."

"Growing up, a film was an action film or it was a comedy or it was romantic, but you don't really see such stark lines between genres nowadays."

"Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader."

"Ask the young. They know everything."

"The passions of the young are vices in the old."

"Kindness is loving people more than they deserve."

"A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve."

"Tenderness is the repose of Passion"

"Tenderness is the rest of passion."

"We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future."

"There is always some frivolity in excellent minds; they have wings to rise, but also stray."

"Imagination is the eye of the soul."

"One who has imagination without learning has wings without feet."

"The mind's direction is more important than its progress."

"God is the place where I do not remember the rest."

"When my friends are one-eyed, I look at their profile"