Music doesn't tell you where to go. It says, go find your own place. That's what it told me.

You can't shut off the risk and the pain without losing the love that remains.

I think I created my particular stage persona out of my dad's life. And perhaps I even built it to suit him to some degree. I was looking for - when I was looking for a voice to mix with my voice, I put on my father's work clothes, as I say in the book, and I went to work.

I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along.

We live in a post-authentic world, and today authenticity is a house of mirrors. It's all just what you're bringing when the lights go down. It's your teachers, your influences, and your personal history. At the end of the day, it's the power and purpose of your music that still matters.

I come from a boardwalk town where almost everything is tinged with a bit of fraud. So am I.

Time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of glory days.