I don't take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.

One of my earliest memories was me singing 'Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin' at the top of my voice when I was seven. I got totally carried away. My grandmother, Sarah, was in the next room. I didn't even realise she was there. I was terribly embarrassed.

You can bring your enemies to their knees with the possible exception of the North Vietnamese.

I tend to write out the first iteration of a lyric here and then go over here and make variations on it, on the page opposite.

He's halfway sick and halfway stoned. He'd sure like to kick, but he's too far gone. So they wind him down with methadone.

I'm often surprised by classical music and musicians. I've met a large number of them because my wife works for the Boston Symphony, and I'm in that world a lot now. I'm surprised at how difficult it is for people who are classically trained to read music or to memorize music, how difficult it is for them to improvise, to just go off and play. It's sort of, it's like terra incognita. They just, (makes noise) they don't get it.

Music is like a huge release of tension.