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.

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.

You know, I live a monastic lifestyle. No, I do. I do live in extremes, basically. I go back and forth. Once every six months, I'll have a day where I eat more chocolate than has ever been consumed by a human being.

To lose one's self in reverie, one must be either very happy, or very unhappy. Reverie is the child of extremes.

It is the belief that extremes and excesses of inequality must be reduced so that each person is free to fully develop his or her full potential. This is why we take precious time out of our lives and give it to politics.

Before Watergate and Viet Nam, the American public, as a whole, believed everything it was told, and since then it doesn't believe anything, and both of those extremes hurt us because they prevent us from recognizing the truth.

Extremes, though contrary, have the like effects. Extreme heat kills, and so extreme cold: extreme love breeds satiety, and so extreme hatred; and too violent rigor tempts chastity, as does too much license.

I have such an extreme attitude about work, where I can just completely be derelict of my responsibilities and then when I am not derelict, I am completely indulged in it. I swing pretty wildly from the two extremes.

Combine the extremes, and you will have the true center.

Extremes are dangerous.

Some people must go to extremes to get the world in balance for themselves. Some can't bear bright lights, so wherever they go they search for the dark; they turn the lights down, anything to sustain some level of comfort.

Bipartisanship helps to avoid extremes and imbalances. It causes compromises and accommodations. So let's cooperate.

Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.

I did that all the more, if I may say so, because I was aware of the fact that there is an inclination to go to extremes in German people, and in the German character generally.

We're self obsessed and mad and stupid - not that other people can't be the same way - but the extremes are kind of honest in some mad way. Anyway, I like them.

We shall never be understood or respected by the English until we carry our individuality to extremes, and by asserting our independence, become of sufficient consequence in their eyes to merit a closer study than they have hitherto accorded us.

You can't just lecture the poor that they shouldn't riot or go to extremes. You have to make the means of legal redress available.

The world is not dialectical - it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil.

It is my view that we cannot conduct foreign policy at the extremes.

I think Christine and Chad are on the opposite extremes of the spectrum. Christine is a model victim, and Chad is a model perpetrator, and Howard is closer to the middle.

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.

However great an evil immorality may be, we must not forget that it is not without its beneficial consequences. It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue.

When you get to the extremes there is, sometimes, just the need where you have to stand up.

Extremes in nature equal ends produce; In man they join to some mysterious use.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.