I fell off stage and bruised some ribs. The worst part was that the audience didn't realize I was gone.

I didn't want my last chapter to be the guy who sits at the piano and sings love songs.

The only thing that's a little tricky about it is sometimes people assume that if it's a new song, it's a reflection of what you're feeling or going through now.

I really didn't have any plans to record prior to doing My Own Best Enemy.

My joke, which isn't really a joke, is that there will be one of two tours: the tour for the album that does well, or the tour for the album that stiffs.

I think I do better when things are a little tougher.

I've never, ever in my life enjoyed playing live the way I am now.

I love when people get songs wrong. I love when people take something from a song that's totally not what I intended!

I understand that, but this disc shows the type of music that I've always liked and wanted to make.

In the past, there has always been so much pressure about carrying a show and promoting a record.

So it was just a case of getting a bunch of songs that I had been writing for years but hadn't recorded together, and the result was My Own Best Enemy.

And to any new fans we made along the way, I say... welcome to our party. It's just starting to get going.

I've never written a song that I thought was a hit.

It never ceases to amaze me that I get to do this for a living.

When things are too easy I lose interest in them so I find ways to complicate them to get myself interested.

One time Robert Plant was set to check into the same room after I checked out, so I removed every light bulb and ordered up a bunch of stinky cheese and put it under the mattress.

I fell off stage and bruised some ribs. The worst part was that the audience didn't realize I was gone.

People take songs so literally.

I'm happy, I would say that I'm one of the happiest people I know but I've certainly had periods of profound sadness, depression and heartache and those are the kind of things that are interesting to me to write about.

I think really what I'm saying is that I thrive on adversity.

But I'm just having fun playing and giving Botox injections to the older songs.

But once you have some success in one style, the business wants to lock you in that vein forever.

I've always loved groups like U2 and Coldplay.

I can't wait to front my band with these new songs and play for fans, but I've decided to keep my day job too.

As a songwriter, there's nothing better than winning Song Of The Year. But I couldn't really celebrate, because it wasn't right. Luther wasn't standing next to me, to receive the award.

I have complete freedom, and there's no way to get pigeonholed or bored. What could be better than that?

I'm now so keenly aware that I have everything to prove and nothing to lose.

I don't think I've ever laid out a batch of songs that pick myself apart the way that these do.

It's funny; Luther and I have written many songs together, but we've never written songs in the same room.

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

But more importantly, I think he remembered how very close I was with my own dad, who had died in 1997.

I am prepared to believe that a dry martini slightly impairs the palate, but think what it does for the soul.

I often felt as a player in a 4-4-2, you end up being outnumbered in midfield and chasing the ball, so as a manager I liked wingbacks to push forward; it gives the midfield player on the ball three or four options.

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

It's not my fault that people don't know me. I'm going to speak my mind, no matter what the consequences are.

I am saying voluntarily that I have sung for almost every religious group in the country, from Jewish and Catholic, and Presbyterian and Holy Rollers and Revival Churches.

I just learned not to take a single thing for granted, and I think it just is extraordinary.

Violence begets violence.

Being in the Midwest, you get the best of all worlds and add your own flavor to it.

George Wendt is a saint. And one of the finest American actors that we have.

Obama remains frozen in his father's time machine. His anti-colonialism is the anti-colonialism of Africa in the 1950s: state confiscation of land, confiscatory taxation, and so on. My anti-colonialism is the anti-colonialism of India in the 21st century.

TV is the best. I wish that's how life was.

I just trust the director and never overanalyse the script, screenplay, etc. You are just taking a bet at the end of the day, so confidence, be it on the filmmaker or the script, is all that counts.

We have self centered minds which get us into plenty of trouble. If we do not come to understand the error in the way we think, our self-awareness, which is our greatest blessing, is also our downfall.

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.

They said VCRs would kill the movies; it didn't.

I'm probably my own harshest critic. If I get a hundred good reviews and one really bad one, it's that one out of a hundred that I remember. I think we actors are hard on ourselves, and I don't know why that is.

These are the themes in life which are consistent in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism - of being grounded in who you are and being engaged in an unjust world.

To me, bigger is better.