It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.

What’s the impulse behind art? It’s saying in whatever language is the language of your work, “If I could move you as much as it moved me … if I can move anyone a tenth as much as that moved me, if I can spark the same sense of mystery and awe and surprise as that sparked in me, well that’s why I do what I do.”

I want another idea, another project, but you can't make them up. They show up.

It may be that the most interesting American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and then to learn something of the value of those limits

I never find myself even catching lyrics until something in the sound has taken me captive. Thinking about anything else is just the pleasurable byproduct of wow.

I had tremendous fun fooling around with the way people talked about songs, just the way that became another way of understanding the world.

Elvis transcends his talent to the point of dispensing with it altogether.