I have to remind myself not to set boundaries.

I'm always making a conscious effort to be viable and accessible.

The best thing you've got going for you is individuality.

It's fun to sing sad songs. And it's fun to listen to sad songs. Enjoyable. Satisfying. Something.

To stand up on a stage alone with an acoustic guitar requires bravery bordering on heroism. Bordering on insanity.

I'm glad there are a lot of guitar players pursuing technique as diligently as they possibly can, because it leaves this whole other area open to people like me.

As the writer, you're always a presence in the song. If you get close to what human beings are like, you're writing about common experience. We all do much the same things, so if you nail somebody, then you've also nailed yourself.

I like the idea of playing in unison with yourself.

I try to make songs visual and tactile to kind of put you into the action.

I just like to entertain myself by sitting down and writing songs.

I probably wrote three-quarters of the songs without an instrument in my hands.

You want the audience to be uncomfortable.

What I wanted to hear didn't exist, so it was necessary for me to go out and create it.

The thing I do, really, is a communication with audiences more than any achievement through records.

I think the reason kids get into drugs and smoking is they don't have anything to do.

Well, first of all it's entertainment. That stops us becoming too pretentious or thinking we're great artists.

There's a part of me that wishes I'd never said one single solitary word on any subject publicly. Then I could have been the tortured poet, and there's so much mileage in that. But it's too late to stop now.

People want to hear about the extremes of human nature. They want things that are larger than their own lives, and more romantic, and not necessarily of their own experiences.

Amplifying acoustic instruments more than a little is really cheating, and everything becomes a compromise.

It's amazing what some people read into songs.

When you stand up acoustic in front of an audience, you really are a man without any clothes on. And that can be fun - it depends how much of an exhibitionist you are, I suppose. I quite enjoy it.

I try to look for the good in everybody, regardless of the way they're labeled.

I have to remind myself not to set boundaries.

I want people to come to my music without prejudice. I want them to get the music first. And who I am isn't that important. If they like the songs to me that's a good thing.

But music can save your life sometimes. It probably saved me from working in a bank or something. That's a kind of salvation right there.

All audiences should be slightly off balance.

Candidly, I believe most corporations actually don't mind big government.

This culture is sort of antithetical in everything it says to the kids. I don't want to pick on 'Jersey Shore,' but it's pretty clear. I would tell the kids good behavior and hard work will pay off, and then they go home and watch TV and go, 'Oh, that's not true.'

The business of Hollywood, if you don't have other things going on, it will eat you up and spit you out... If you take what those people and that social structure think of you - if you let it govern your life - you might as well just kill yourself.

I was like everyone else when Obama was elected - optimistic.

Eventually I would like to touch all the genres. I would like to do some detective stories, and I want to do a Western. I would want to do humorous Westerns.

No nation can claim, 'We are an uncorrupt nation, therefore we will tell you what the morals of democracy are.'

I'd never experienced stress before I did stand-up, and it was a massive shock to my system, this thing of waking up, and the nerves of, 'You're on stage tonight.'

No one knows what women want!

Psychologists and economists love to talk about the notion of two selves: present self and future self. It's a nice way to explain the tendency to have one preference about the future, but a very different preference when the future becomes the present.

Experience is the only prophecy of wise men.

No sin, especially no great sin, is just a harm done to the individual who commits it. I believe myself that the future of the human race is bound up with that idea. The soul that is conscious of a grievous sin is conscious of a great harm done to the community - to someone else. That common hurt should now be forgiven.

Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don't.

I feel good doing it. It's not like guys are stripping me at half-court or I'm just losing the ball dribbling. I think I'm handling the ball pretty well, just trying to make good passes, man.

I have never met an author who did not read voraciously as a child.

I never took classic business classes in college, so I don't have the background that any of the people running large companies have.

As long as there's a few farmers out there, we'll keep fighting for them.

Coats are my favorite thing, and it's always cold in England. I'm comfortable spending a bit of money if you know you're going to be wearing it 10 years later.

I write funny. If I can make my wife laugh, I know I'm on the right track. But yes, I don't like to get Maudlin. And I have a tendency towards it.

When doubt comes against us, we have to lift up the shield of faith. We do this when we open our mouth and say what God's Word says, rather than grumbling and complaining about the problem.

What you look like, whether you're Brad Pitt or Charles Laughton, is significant for actors.

I want to go to sea.

This city now doth like a garment wear the beauty of the morning silent bare ships towers domes theatres and temples lie open unto the fields and to the sky All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

We're sort of putting a slightly different spin on Steve Rogers. He's a guy that wants to serve his country, but he's not a flag-waver. We're reinterpreting, sort of, what the comic book version of Steve Rogers was.