When you're sad and when you're lonely and you haven't got a friend, just remember that death is not the end.

Nothing can affect my voice, it's so bad.

People are going to say, ‘Well, it’s not very truthful.’ But a songwriter doesn’t care about what’s truthful. What he cares about is what should’ve happened, what could’ve happened. That’s its own kind of truth. It’s like people who read Shakespeare plays, but they never see a Shakespeare play. I think they just use his name.

It's east to see without lookin' too far that not much is really sacred.

The tree of life is growing where the spirit never dies, and the bright light of salvation shines in dark and empty skies.

We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it

I don't know if I call myself a poet or not. I would like to, but I'm not really qualified to make that decision, because I come in on such a back door, that I don't know what a Robert Frost or a [John] Keats or a T.S. Eliot would really think of my stuff.