I always look terrible before the show. That's when I feel worst. And after the show it's like a million bucks. Simple as that. You feel a little tired but you never feel better. Nothing makes me feel as good as those hours between when you walk offstage, until I go to bed. That's the hours that I live for.

Work creates an enormous sense of self and I saw that in my mother. She was an enormous, towering figure to me in the best possible way. I picked up a lot of things from her in the way that I work... I also picked up a lot of the failings of when your father doesn't have those things and that results in a house that turns into a minefield.

I held four clean aces. I had youth, almost a decade of hard-core bar band experience, a good group of homegrown musicians who were attuned to my performance style and a story to tell.

A man armed with a rhyming dictionary is a dangerous man.

I've found that giving 100% to your job isn't the same as giving 100% of your life to your job. Very often when I thought I was giving 100% of my life to my job, I was simply obsessing over something.

I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't.

You have moments of clarity, things become clear to you that you didn't understand before. But there's never any making ends meet or finding any time of longstanding peace of mind about something.