I think Shakespeare is really the one. Words as music and music as words. Everything he wrote was good, which is really frightening.

Man has done a lot to make himself dangerous and animals get the worst of all of it. But then, man too is an animal.

When I see a dolphin, I know it's just as smart as I am.

Johnny Rotten. He's a big fan of mine. I used to see him out in the audience in England and he'd stand up and holler. He's funny. Smart too, and a nice guy. Don't think he's a jerk because he isn't.

Most of modern rock and roll is a product of guilt.

I'd rather play a tune on a horn, but I've always felt that I didn't want to train myself. Because when you get a train, you've got to have an engine and a caboose. I think it's better to train the caboose. You train yourself, you strain yourself.

An audience can really lift you right up off the stage.

You can tell by the kindness of a dog how a human should be.

But I have been in some very beautiful churches, then I've looked outside and seen people starving to death.

You can almost judge how screwed up somebody is by the kind of toilet paper they use. Go in any rich house and it's some weird coloured embossed stuff.

I don't look like a desert person because I stay indoors most of the day and fool around at night. That's what the desert animals do - they don't have a tan either.

I think most people try to get others to see through their eyes.

That Sid Vicious was obviously a schizophrenic, kind of a mean one too.

I don't do lullabyes.

Bob Dylan impresses me about as much as... well, I was gonna say a slug but I like slugs.

I live in a Mobile Home - I've never had a house, except once; I rented a log cabin.

I'm interested in playing, not working.

The stars are matter, we're matter, but it doesn't matter.

I don't think artists are made, I think they're born.

I'd never just want to do what everybody else did. I'd be contributing to the sameness of everything.

I have no neighbours other than animals and Joshua Trees.

I needed to purge myself of all the attention my parents had given me - I wasn't neglected enough as a child.

I think Shakespeare is really the one. Words as music and music as words. Everything he wrote was good, which is really frightening.

I don't even know what sound is, much less what it's for. It isn't to make money that's for sure. I've never made any.

With my voice and my band, I can do anything.

The wind is a very difficult sound to get. It's always changing.

I would never kill a living thing, although I probably have inadvertently while driving automobiles.

James Brown is important because he decorates the clock correctly and he's good with lower mathematics. Don't get me wrong - he's good.

If you want to be a different fish jump out of school.

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.