Before you can make good music, you just have to shut up. Then the music can say what it has to say.

My brother and I were meditating before we were 6 years old, having to stare at the wall and chant.

The songs become the show, which is how it should be.

I don't have the inclinations that other people seem to have as far as the business is concerned.

The songs keep on writing themselves, and I really love them. It's as close as I get to a religion.

I don't like what the radio plays for the most part.

MP3's are perfect.

We need a day of the dead. That's a perfect celebration.

I guess I'll just slip into the studio after the next time with the Muses, and then just keel over and die.

I felt like it was a great secret when I found out that I could be in my 30s.

Nirvana was pop. You can have distorted guitars and people say it's alternative, but you can't break out of pop music's constructs and still get extensive radio play and media coverage.

Good taste - that's all you really need when you're playing an instrument.

If you're the band leader you ask more of yourself than anyone else, so they tend to raise the bar for me.

To do it nationally or internationally, you have to follow a few more rules.

I would go to radio stations and they were supposed to be interviewing me and playing my record and they would say, We're playing too many women right now, we can't play your record.

Most of the younger people I knew didn't seem to have a handle on things; they hadn't found their place, they didn't understand how the world works, they didn't understand how to treat other people, and they didn't know how to stop thinking about themselves.

That's my dream job, to be able to mail songs out to people who want to hear them. Paste my face on them and not travel all over the world trying to sell them.

Before you can make good music, you just have to shut up. Then the music can say what it has to say.

We didn't really swallow much of the Jesus thing, but we got the vocab.

I don't like the idea of famous people.

My parents didn't treat me as if there was anything in the world I couldn't do, except be unkind.

I grew up in a commune where no one considered me female, particularly.

I've always chosen my band members based on their sense of humor. It might sound stupid, but it means not only are they fun to live with on a tour bus for years, but humor implies intelligence.

I'm beginning to think I have two years encountering sexism without really realising it.

Men are allowed to write songs about people and women are allowed to write songs about women.

I don't mind what the market is, but why is it vapid? If they're such a bunch of idiots, why don't you show them good music instead? They're not going to know the difference.

You have to follow every melodic line, every emotional idea, or you don't get your money's worth.

I have to play as much of the game as I allow myself to get the music heard. But it's not unlike the rest of the world, so I'm not as up in arms about it as I could be.

Popular music sucks so bad right now.

When you use music to worship you are not attempting to entertain.

Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away.

When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.

You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.

Don't make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. Though it's crucial to make a living, that shouldn't be your inspiration. Do it for yourself.

Whether I'm doing music or I'm walking down the street or I'm in a record store buying a record or I walk into a comic store and I'm buying comics or having a drink with my friends, it's the same me.

When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music - they are music.

I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.

There is no music that can't be used politically, but the motives behind the creation of that music can be non-political.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.

Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.

My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.

I was determined to carve out a music of my own. I didn't want to copy anybody.

I have tried to make the music a bit easier for them to understand.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.

The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.

My big love was the Beatles. I was more into music.

When we started making electronic music I imagined that the reaction we got from the rock musicians must have been similar to the one the beat groups got from people like my dad.