I only write when I'm angry or sad, so because that's when I just have to write... If I'm having a good time and I'm happy and things are going really well, why would I want to stop what I'm doing to go and write at the piano?

For many years, I was a really heavy drinker, but people don't know about that because I'm by myself all the time. Recently, I didn't drink for eight or nine months, and I learned that alcohol was quadrupling the embarrassing moments - those moments when you're drunk and you say something you remember the next morning and feel embarrassed about.

I really don't think anything I do is a mistake. It could be if I didn't learn from it.

When you're famous weird things will happen that end up hurting your feelings. I'll get a letter from somebody I knew a while ago and I'll be really touched. Then I'll turn over the envelope and their business card falls out.

I was never somebody who grew up going, 'I really want to be a singer in a band,' and I never had any ambition toward anything, really.

I had really bad obsessive-compulsive disorder. At its worst, I was compelled to leave my house at three o'clock in the morning and go out in the alley because I just knew that the paper-towel roll I threw in the recycling bin was uncomfortable, like it was lying the wrong way, and I would be down in the garbage.

The quick success was a bit strange to get used to.