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

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.

There's an art to making something look good when, on a hanger, it's just a black coat.

I find it hard to imagine how someone listens to my stuff, or views what I do, or me, or anything.

You see thousands of films you forget the minute you come out of the cinema, don't you? Because they don't mean anything. It's the tough ones like 'Breaking the Waves' and 'Nil By Mouth' that stay with you, that you never forget. I'd like to leave a few of those behind if possible.

When I leave the country, I'm very, very cautious about what I eat and drink. No vegetables, no fruit.

But I learned that there's a certain character that can be built from embarrassing yourself endlessly. If you can sit happy with embarrassment, there's not much else that can really get to ya.

I do not like the idea that a Russian company cannot be successful without Western experience. I think that, at the end of the day, it is a question of bringing benchmarks from other countries. So far, the golden benchmark has been the West.

Do your homework and keep good files. Know the background and biases of your sources.

Remember this: They hate you because you represent something they feel they don’t have. It really isn’t about you. It is about the hatred they have for themselves. So smile today because there is something you are doing right that has a lot of people thinking about you.

Wrong people are wrong not because of their faults but because of their presumed virtues.

What firefighters and people in our military and cops do is separate from what the rest of us do basically these people say Im going to protect all these strangers.

Doing my own album provided me the opportunity to say whatever I wanted.

I think that all women, unless they are absolutely asleep, must be feminists up to a point.

This whole thing about winning and losing is muddy waters. But I can remember, as a young actor, just walking around this city and not being able to get arrested.

I didn't know why God had chose me for this ordeal, but I was somehow suited to it and knew that I would see it through to the end.

What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.

You'll see the most perfect person, and you are like, 'God, she's, like, perfect.' And then she'll tell you everything that's not perfect. Everyone has their own special set of problems - in their own minds.

God was awfully good to me during the good days. I cherish the old days, but I don't miss them.

Elementary considerations led me to the conclusion that a medium, composed of layers of different dielectric constants, must behave as a uniaxial crystal if it is assumed that the layer thicknesses are only a fraction of a wave-length.