If you're really going to uncover something as an artist, you're going to come into access with parts of your personality and your psyche that are really uncomfortable to face: your own ambition, your own greed, your own avarice, your own jealousies, and anything that would get in the way of the purity of your own artistic voice.

I think rock & roll has prepared me for a lot of flexibility.

About six months ago, I listened to Siamese Dream. That was the first time I'd ever really heard my own album, because I had separated from the experience of making the record. And it really moved me. It made me cry, it's so beautiful.

That's the great thing about rock n' roll: the myth is ultimately more important than the reality. And that's what you learn - you just learn to go with the mythology.

My father was a guitar player, and I was raised with a super high standard of what good guitar playing was.

Not let the child run the circus, just have that child be the source of the creative voice.

I think long and hard about what it is I'm actually trying to do, and then I kind of have to narrow my focus into that. If I don't, I'm too all over the place.