It's nice to be able to backtrack and not be embarrassed by the music you used to listen to.

It's nice to be able to backtrack and not be embarrassed by the music you used to listen to.

I'd like my records to reach as many people as possible, but I'm also thinking in terms of how I can keep from getting jaded or unhappy with the process.

I need to go someplace faraway that doesn't have telephones and doesn't have a record player and doesn't have movie theaters and people walking down the street in order to not do anything.

As it turns out, as an adult I can have a very unpleasant, fierce and unforgiving temper at times. But I don't think I had that when I was a kid.

Cities are made for enemies to destroy.

I do not want a personal relationship with my fans. Or to do anything that encourages them to think they have one with me. They can have a personal relationship with my songs. That's fine, but they don't know me.

I don't like going to cities. I don't mind maybe being in a city sometimes for a few hours, but I pretty much don't like cities. I don't even like passing through them.

I don't like the idea of being surrounded by hidden things; people you can't see in buildings and cars.

I don't think that word - the word pirate - has any real meaning. Or it's something that's had meaning imposed on it.

I have more respect for somebody who points at his ideal - in this case, the ideal of the pirate - and then becomes something that's more radical, more exciting, more subversive than a pirate could ever be.

I like rural areas.

I make the songs and part of making them is singing them. But what you hear is not me. It's the song. It's through me.

I really hate press.

I think everybody works from a defensive position, for the most part, in the film industry.

I think records and music are more appropriate and more respectful of the human soul than the churches are. And more respectful of the needs of humans to communicate with the aspects of themselves that are neglected by language.

I think that America in general is piratical. Every time we accept a paycheck for doing almost nothing, allowing us to live above the poverty line, we're engaging in piracy.

I write a song to be recorded. And to some extent to be performed, but definitely more to be recorded than performed, because the recording will last longer than a performance.

It is more rewarding to be complicit with scarcity than excess.

It's O.K. to accept good fortune.

People are looking for fame or a focus, and I can't provide that.

Sometimes we need to tell ourselves that we're not going to do certain things, just in order to stay sane.

There's very little admirable about being a pirate. There's very little functional about a pirate. There's very little real about a pirate.

Too much emphasis is put on American roots music when people try and place me. You know, I grew up listening to punk.

What is normally called religion is what I would tend to call music - participating in music, listening to music, making records and singing.

Whenever I see something that looks like it could be good - whether it's on vinyl, CD or cassette - if it's not too expensive, I'll take a chance.

Writing songs is a profession; so it's not an attempt to take things from my interactions with other people and for some reason give them to a total stranger to listen to. I find it offensive to hear other people do that.

When you use music to worship you are not attempting to entertain.

Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away.

When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.

You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.

Don't make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. Though it's crucial to make a living, that shouldn't be your inspiration. Do it for yourself.

Whether I'm doing music or I'm walking down the street or I'm in a record store buying a record or I walk into a comic store and I'm buying comics or having a drink with my friends, it's the same me.

When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music - they are music.

I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.

There is no music that can't be used politically, but the motives behind the creation of that music can be non-political.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.

Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.

My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.

I was determined to carve out a music of my own. I didn't want to copy anybody.

I have tried to make the music a bit easier for them to understand.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.

The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.

My big love was the Beatles. I was more into music.

When we started making electronic music I imagined that the reaction we got from the rock musicians must have been similar to the one the beat groups got from people like my dad.

Uhm, I'm the one wanting the lessons! I don't want to say too much about it because I'd rather have you see the movie, but he's trying to find his music.

The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.