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

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.

We in America have gotten addicted to cheap food. The result of that is antibiotic-laden fish, foods that are bred to be portable.

The tiger lies low not from fear, but for aim.

Ronald Isley is a musical genius.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

Geniuses dont become geniuses until they find the right moron to compare themselves to.

I'm just an entertainer. All I want to be is funny. I never aspired to play Hamlet.

All things that both a husband and wife really want are to be forgiven a little encouraged a little and loved a little.

The simplest fix for better grilling is to line the inside of your barbecue with tin foil. It dramatically affects how evenly the heat is distributed. That crusty black hibachi or Weber grill is doing your food no favors.

Some people are a little bit afraid about the future because they see all these gadgets and gizmos coming down the pike and they think they're too old to learn all this new stuff. But eventually they begin to realize, 'Hey, some of this stuff is useful.'

True friendship is never serene.

I built a reputation as a songwriter in the industry before my own hits. People were used to coming to me for songs. There were songs like 'Clown' and 'Mountains' that were my songs that I wanted to keep. But the record labels saw me as a songwriter. It was hard to get people to believe in me as an artist.

I was nine or 10 years old and my father was sacked on Christmas Day. He was a manager, the results had not been good, he lost a game on December 22 or 23. On Christmas Day, the telephone rang and he was sacked in the middle of our lunch.

Band of Skulls is joining Cage the Elephant as my new musical caffeine.

You may be a redneck if... your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.

A lot of times you'll have somebody who could be the most talented person in the world, but because they are plus-sized, they're not even considered for a call back.

In my first book, Under Fire, I wrote that I revered Ronald Reagan. That was a dozen years ago. I still feel that way. I think he changed the world for the better for my children and my children's children.