When I write a song, it's all about the riff - the riff first, then the words come later.

When I write a song, it's all about the riff - the riff first, then the words come later.

See, to me, rock'n'roll doesn't have any point. It's just fun. It has a million different angles and they're all valid. But I think rock might be a world issue.

You know more about me than I do about myself, that's probably true.

Even the bands I dig don't have a history of attaining mass consumption.

I used to have a sort of spiky haircut and it just feels better to have short hair again.

Basically, between 1989 and 1994, I hadn't taken a vacation.

Rock stars wanting to write is even worse than wanting to act in movies, right?

But Sneaky Pete was great. I didn't bug him about Gram. Not too much, anyway.

For me, it's all about The Dubliners by James Joyce. I love The Dead.

I've got time, I hope, to make lots of quiet records. So quiet you won't be able to hear them.

CDs, too. Totally corporate. They look real cheap and soulless and they don't smell of anything.

I lie around and play guitar, that's something I do for sure. In fact that's all I do, I think.

It is hard, though, 'cos record labels love to boss you around. I won't let them do that anymore.

I don't write down my experiences, but I have a very decent memory. I have tons of books in which I write down phrases as they occur to me. That's how I write songs. I'll need a line and I'll go through the books and find it, the right rhyme and everything.

Since Elizabeth, I certainly live a healthier lifestyle.

It's better when you have your wife with you, more fun.

I was trying to spend it as quickly as possible. Because I'm so lazy, all that money created a block. I was flying around the world, staying at fancy hotels, having fun and trying to get rid of it as quickly as possible, so I could get on with some more work.

My high-school dream was to be in a band, pay my rent and eat - and I've been able to do that for 20 years. So I'm completely content.

Some of our stuff ends up looking too corporate. I'm going to be a lot stricter from now on.

I need the money. People don't understand how little money you make in a band.

I guess I'm about ready to promote myself in a more human way. I don't feel quite so insecure.

I'd forgotten what it was like to play music and have it be fun so I decided to stop. I wasn't even sure if I was going to make a new record, I was just kinda quitting.

When there are no women on the tour it can get awful and ugly - constant horrible jokes and gross behaviour. It needs to be leavened with a feminine presence.

But ya have to make videos in the States. Usually ours just look too serious. We haven't got it together.

When I was 14 years old, I was a huge fan of the Velvets, the Stooges and the Modern Lovers. They are my three favourite bands. I never get sick of 'em.

The best songs I write in 20 minutes.

I was hanging out with Jonathan Richman last night.

I don't like alcohol, but I still like to mess around with other stuff occasionally. I think it's important I take mushrooms and acid. They're certainly not addictive, so I can't rule that out.

I have to make rock records occasionally.

The principal rule of art is to please and to move. All the other rules were created to achieve this first one.

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.

Let me first state that I believe that marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman.

Entropy theory is indeed a first attempt to deal with global form; but it has not been dealing with structure. All it says is that a large sum of elements may have properties not found in a smaller sample of them.

There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.

The avantgarde are people who don't exactly know where they want to go, but are the first to get there.

I never taste the wine first in restaurants, I just ask the waiter to pour.

After the first miscarriage, I tried to take the attitude that it was my body's way of telling me that this pregnancy wasn't meant to be.

Before and during the first phase of the war his administration repeatedly maligned the UN but now, that Iraq has turned into a quagmire, it is asking the UN for help.

You look at the whole Human Rights questions, I happened to be there at just the right time when the country was awakening - this goes to the first question you asked - the whole country was awakening to a hundred years of injustice that hadn't been resolved yet.

So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.

My first figure was a SLAYER eagle. And the dragons and the tribals are all I have got.

We're parents first, and once you have kids, everybody knows that you have priority lists. Number one is your family and everything else just kind of finds its place.

Everything has to be pulling weight in a short story for it to be really of the first order.

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

I sort of understood that when I first started: that you shouldn't repeat a success. Very often you're going to, and maybe the first time you do, it works. And you love it. But then you're trapped.

Working-class Americans have waited too long, close to a decade in fact, for an increase in the minimum wage. This has been the second longest period without a pay raise since the Federal minimum wage law was first enacted in 1938.

The first thing you do when you get out to center field is put up your finger and check the wind chill factor.

Christians must be Jews. The truth of what we believe depends on the truth of Judaism, depends on the first covenant.