I'm lucky. Hard work is the key, but luck plays a part.

Song Sung Blue took a lot of compressing and refining, and it has one of my favorite lyrics.

I've always thought of music as something which gives the words their flight and their wings and the music often comes first, although sometimes I'll have a concept, a title idea, a lyric idea that I want to write and the lyric will come first.

I think probably Australians have just a little more taste than most people.

I still need practice in enjoying the fruits of success.

If it can affect me, if it has meaning to me, if I feel I can do it well, I will do it and record it and thats why I recorded these songs.

I've looked at photographs of myself during concerts and it sometimes looks as if I'm in a fencing move, with a guitar in my hands instead of a sword.

Songwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory.

No, I majored in biology, in a pre-med program.

When you're on a merry-go-round, you miss a lot of the scenery.

Because my musical training has been limited, I've never been restricted by what technical musicians might call a song.

It's very difficult for me to say 'I love you' but to sing 'I love you' for me is easier.

The main objective in any song, the songs that I write, has always been that it reflect the way I feel, that it touch me when I'm finished with it, that it moves me, that it can take me along with it and involve me in what its saying.

Performing is the easiest part of what I do, and songwriting is the hardest.

I don't like all of the music to be serious and deadly.

Songwritng is what I do.

Brooklyn is not the easiest place to grow up in, although I wouldn't change that experience for anything.

Chelsea Morning is a great Joni Mitchell song and I guess I'm partial to her lyrics because they show me a slightly different perspective on life.

There's a mystery to writing, and you don't really know where most of it comes from.

I came back to performing with a different attitude about performing and myself. I wasn't expecting perfection any more, just hoping for an occasional inspiration.

Songs are life in 80 words or less.

I'm lucky. Hard work is the key, but luck plays a part.

I don't feel I have to write deep and meaningful songs; they can be light and meaningless. It has to do with the place I am in my life, a really good place.

I like having a woman. I like having someone to come home to, to make all of the hard work feel worth it. I need someone with me. And I want someone.

I may have a little bit of a talent for music, but I've learnt to tap into my own self when I write. When I put the drill bit inside my heart, sometimes I come up with something light and frothy, sometimes with something deep and painful, but it's great to connect with the audience.

I used to go to my kids' soccer games and I was the only parent who wasn't screaming, because I'd have to do a show that night. It was hard. Moms and dads get more emotional at those soccer and Little League games than at a professional game.

I'm throwing myself back in because I like being married. I don't want to end this whole fabulous journey alone. I want someone by my side who I love and who loves me. I've finally found somebody who's up to the task of being my wife, because I'm very high maintenance.

It was a real hand-to-mouth existence in those early days - I'd have whatever dry cereal there was in the house for breakfast, 30 cents to spend on lunch and a hot dog for dinner. I did that for years. So there was definitely a hunger in me, of various kinds, to succeed.

The cardinal rule for any performer is that they should know themselves before they enter the spotlight, and I didn't. I was just Neil and I did what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to get married, so I got married. I was supposed to get a job, so I looked for work.

When I need my wife or when I need companionship or someone to talk to, I need it, like, now. So my wife will have to give up whatever she's doing at that moment to tend to my needs. And, in the same way, I would tend to hers. That's not such an easy thing to do.

You can't plan to write a great song. It just happens to you. It drops in your lap. It's the same thing with a woman.

When I meet successful people I ask 100 questions as to what they attribute their success to. It is usually the same: persistence, hard work and hiring good people.

Happiness is the real sense of fulfillment that comes from hard work.

You can't get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you're doing. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself.

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

Young people are threatened... by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediate satisfaction of every desire.

This acting was very hard work.

Success depends in a very large measure upon individual initiative and exertion, and cannot be achieved except by a dint of hard work.

You can browse to your heart's content but it's hard work and not easy on the feet unless you do it through catalogs or the Internet, and I like to touch and try on the things I buy.

It's got too much hard work slapping them and telling them to shut up.

The only method by which people can be supported is out of the effort of those who are earning their own way. We must not create a deterrent to hard work.

The nature of the task needs to be renewed so people just don't feel that all the hard work is in the same groove all the time, under the same circumstances and in the same environment.

If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.

Reading a novel in which all characters illustrate patience, hard work, chastity, and delayed gratification could be a pretty dull experience.

John Kerry believes in an America where hard work is rewarded.

I do not believe in excuses. I believe in hard work as the prime solvent of life's problems.

I do enjoy making videos, even though they are long days and very hard work.

I love what I'm doing most of the time, but it's hard work. People only see your albums in the charts. They see us at award shows and after-show parties. They don't know about your doubts, the hard work that goes in.

I think that with a lot of hard work and dedication, I feel that I could be the best in the world. I'm still only 35 years old... I have a fresh start physically and mentally, and I feel that I can achieve my goal to be the best again.