But back then the thing that saved me was the music, and it's certainly the music that saves me now. The music, my family and my friends and everybody around me.

If you put the right things out there the right things will happen.

The lyrics came out of necessity. When we started writing the record, we started in a more fusion environment and that got boring really quick and that wasn't what we were about on an organic level.

Had I joined a straight rock band, I'm sure my drumming would be a little bit different right now.

I can't take days off and play like I did last night. Maybe some people can, but I can't.

What I see for the band by the end of this year is the Complex live at the Montreux Jazz Festival. I want my guys to be comfortable. I'm certainly not in this for the money, but I'd really like to see my guys make some money off of this stuff.

I think that the jazzy approach that I have is based on the way that I hear music and in the way I play a supporting role to the other people in the band.

If you can get a twelve year-old kid to go listen to Thelonius Monk, what more do you want? Do you want a big pile of cash, too? That's a home run for me.

At first it was a bit daunting, but once I started to do it, the more I got into it, the more I started enjoying it and being able to say things lyrically that I would normally have to say musically.

I take my craft very seriously.

No one writes about the emotional things you go through.

I feel really good in the teacher role.

I've always seen my drumming as lyrical anyway.

The thing I try to do the most is to play in terms of the song and play in terms of what I'm hearing.

You start to look at it with a deeper respect and I think that deeper respect for what you do builds more self-respect.

When I'm at home I practice everyday.

My brother and I had a real love-hate relationship with my success. There was some bitterness there that I didn't understand until recently, but I told him that if I ever did a record I wanted him to play on it.

My brother was always in bands and on the road when I was a kid and he was my inspiration. He never made it with a big band, in fact he never made a record. Here he is fifty-something years old.

All he wants to do is practice and that's all he does, all day long. That's what it takes if you want to change the face of music. You've gotta be committed to it.

But back then the thing that saved me was the music, and it's certainly the music that saves me now. The music, my family and my friends and everybody around me.

People just expect you to show up, be a cartoon character of yourself, take your money and go home. But don't screw up to the point where you're gonna be out of the picture.

I left the Pumpkins in 2010, and I just took a year off to hang with my family and be with my daughter and my son and my wife, and just get acclimatised to being off the road. Then I started looking at what was going to be the next part of my career/legacy, whatever you want to call it.

Music is always going to be only as sophisticated as the culture that consumes it.

Music is my life. It is sacred.

Part of the reason that I left the Pumpkins is because it was becoming all-consuming. Being the only member of that band who had two kids and a wife, it was a hard decision, but ultimately it was a decision I'm comfortable with.

Today's consumer is less interested in possessing things and more in experiencing them. That's something the music industry needs to get its head around. Do we even need record companies any more?

U2 are a great band; they've given us an unbelievable body of work, and all of us musicians owe them at least something. I can honestly say that every time I have played the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, as soon as my drums are set up, I go into the beat of 'Sunday Bloody Sunday.'

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.

On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family.

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.

I have a project at HBO and one at the Family Channel coming that are being looked at. Aside from that I am not doing much more than playing golf and some skiing.

I didn't tell anybody about my plan because I was convinced my family or friends would stop me. I didn't think much about what would happen afterwards.

You know raising a family in the lifestyle of a professional athlete can be very difficult.

I love to see my family together. That's what life is about. It's about family.

Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.

It was an idea we had when Al was in the Senate - to organize and moderate an annual conference that would look at government policy through the lens of the family to help identify ways that the family can be supported and strengthened.

Even though we were all celebrities to a certain extent, we all looked at each other as family.

The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States.

A growing awareness of the depth of popular attachment to the family has led some liberals to concede that family is not just a buzzword for reaction.

I love my family.

I have other obligations now - the show, my family, my life... though I know that without my sobriety I wouldn't have any of those things.

When they were small and my wife really had no other responsibilities, except taking care of the family and all of us, it wasn't that big a deal. It was fun. Hey, we're going to Moscow. We're going to Italy. We're going to Toronto. We're going to New York.

I miss my family, and I like being a tourist when I go back.

I'm not in the business of becoming famous. And that's the advice I give to younger aspiring actors. Work onstage and do the little roles. In the end it's not important to be seen. It's important to do. There's a lot of disappointment in this business, but my family keeps me grounded.

The last three decades have seen the collapse of the family wage system.

I have continued systematically to study the Book of Mormon and Bible to understand even more deeply what God expects of me and my family while on this earth.

When I finally gave up any hope of doing anything representative of the American family, I actually seemed to have tapped into other people's weirdness in that way.

Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.

When I said I was going to audition for a film, I got a hearty laugh from all my family.