I don't wanna play this kind of cartoon character anymore.

When you move artistically, the natural inclination is to denounce everything that's gone before.

Like any form of death, at some point you just have to get up and say yeah I'll take it, whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen and sorta chop your head off. It's easy to avoid all that...there's always another moment, another girl, another high, another drug, there's always something to distract you.

I'm viewed as this weird, crippled character. But you got to take your lumps.

I was trying to be this person who is cool, eternally rocking.

I was playing heavy metal when I was 18. I had to evolve out of that into an alternative consciousness about what it meant to change the way I played guitar, and the kind of songs, and the subject matter, and singing about child abuse, and all this stuff. I had to come from somewhere, and I had to take chances to do that.

My view of the world is always tempered by the fact that there are people who are less fortunate than I am.