That's part of the curse: If you're gonna play the song, you better play it. I've tried to phone in 'Jeremy' a few times, and it's tough. It doesn't work.

I just have this deep kind of connection to reality of being like... in a way, I feel like a dock worker. I want to stay in connection with my dock-worker side, 'cause that's how I grew up.

i know someday you'll have a beautiful life. I know you'll be a sun in somebody else's sky. But why can't it be mine?

I am a thief, I am a liar, I am George Bush and my son is an asshole.

When you're inside and you have no control and when you're the 14-year-old version of Frances Farmer, you know, you have reasons to be angry. You have reasons to be angry when your parents, who are very sheltered themselves, make decisions as to what you should experience in your life and what's normal and what's not.

It's important to have a life and spend time outside of those things [music and politics], in order to appreciate what you've achieved as far as just spending time with people you love, and doing things like painting.

I think music is the greatest art form that exists, and I think people listen to music for different reasons, and it serves different purposes. Some of it is background music, and some of it is things that might affect a person's day, if not their life, or change an attitude. The best songs are the ones that make you feel something.