It's a tough thing to know that when you're making your album, you're going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.

It's a tough thing to know that when you're making your album, you're going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.

A lot of 18-year-olds are like old men. They think they've seen everything.

Everybody knows it hurts to grow up... and we're still fighting it.

Next door, there's an old man who lived to his nineties and one day passed away in his sleep. And his wife, she stayed for a couple of days and passed away. I'm sorry, I know that's a strange way to tell you that I know we belong.

I used to do this big rant at the end of some gigs with Ben Folds Five. The band broke into this big heavy metal thing and I started as a joke to scream in a heavy metal falsetto. I found myself saying things like: Feel my pain, I am white, feel my pain.

The clock never stops, never stops, never waits. We're growing old. It's getting late.

You never know when you put out an album that's unique whether it'll get beat up for it or not.

I'm older than I was, and I'm still washed-up, and I haven't changed my music one iota. It's just much easier to do this when people are being nice to you.

Rock and roll is - and should be - a kid's place.

Now that I have found someone, I'm feeling more alone... than I ever have before.

Because I write very simply, but inside the simplicity, there's a lot of subtlety. That's what I'm proud of.

Billy Joel and Joe Jackson were both great, and they both play piano.

But I really do have a soft spot for the solo shows. Any musician who writes and sings will tell you that's the center of it, that is it. It's almost like there's something church-like about it and you gotta go back there, if you're a songwriter that sings your material.

Everyone, when you're a teenager and you're growing up, you do feel like your life is dramatic enough to be on a TV screen, but we know that it's not.

I do have that mindset - that most good art comes from some turmoil, from someone trying to come to some equilibrium, or come up and get a breath.

I'm aware that I'm very fringe, and it's nice that way.

I'm not really a strange person or anything, so if there's music I like, usually there's other people who like it too.

I'm really good at writing 'almost hits'.

Maybe this is wrong, but I feel like I craft my songs carefully enough that I still find that fifteen years after having written one, it still works for me - I'm not cringing.

My idea is to play with the people who you know want to get it right. Then it's fun and easy to record, and you can get down to details, like taking out cymbals so the verse doesn't dwarf the chorus, something like that.

My job is to be some sort of music/lyric psychic, to figure out that that's the right song to not fight the lyric.

The nature of honesty is that if someone has information or knows something about you that you don't want heard, then they have power over you.

The reason I stop playing songs is usually because I get sick of them, and then they find themselves back into the set list at some point.

There is still some art in pop music. But it can't happen if you're not inspired.

Why would I want to sound like Joni Mitchell? I've got Joni Mitchell records, and they're great, and I couldn't possibly be that good.

With the a cappella groups, every voice is like one string on a guitar, one note on the piano, or one cymbal, and you don't have the luxury of falling back on anything.

Smile like you've got nothing to prove.

I could probably live in Bali the rest of my life and completely live in the sticks and have a fking moped and make a record every couple of years and not step in public and break even like I do anyway. Thats really tempting.

The clock never stops never stops never waits. Were growing old. Its getting late.

I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you.

Notes don't make music until you learn to insert silence between them.

If you're afraid they might discover your redneck past, there are a hundred ways to cover your redneck past.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.

All enterprises that are entered into with indiscreet zeal may be pursued with great vigor at first, but are sure to collapse in the end.

I don't write drafts. I write from the beginning to the end, and when it's finished, it's done.

Young actors often don't think of the consequences of doing nudity or sex scenes. They want the role so badly that they agree to be exploited, and then end up embarrassing family, friends, and even strangers.

They haul you up there for, you know, week after week in this kind of star chamber proceeding. Then at the end of it they say, well, we found nothing, but now it's time for special counsel.

The difference between talking on your cell phone while driving and speaking with a passenger is huge. The person on the other end of the cell phone is chattering away, oblivious.

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

The big battle at the end of DW isn't drawn from history, but it's influenced by history, certainly.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

I did know that the book would end with a mind-boggling trial, but I didn't know exactly how it would turn out. I like a little suspense when I am writing, too.

If he didn't fall in love he would have never come back near the end of the film. Because, what man is going to dishonor himself so that he comes back in front of the man that took a woman away from him... and warns her to save her life?

Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there.

Pacifist propaganda and the resolutions of the parliamentarians encouraged such treaties, and toward the end of the nineteenth century their number had increased considerably.

Will Arnett is one of the funniest guys I know. He has seen it all and done it all and come out the other end pretty savvy and pretty strong.

I'm the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.