The only goal is in the process. The process is the thing…with little flashes of light here and there. Those are the gigs, those are the live shows. But it's the life in between—that's all I got.

If you want to get somewhere in this life, learn to draw beautiful women.

I don’t know, I don’t know that I’m missing anything. I just think too much sometimes. Sometimes I’m even happy because I’m so engaged in the thinking. But that’s the great thing about performing, and why it is also sexual, because in that moment – or in that evening – I’m completely in the present for once in my life. Nothing that came before or anything that may come after: only what matters is now. And that’s what human beings crave.

I think I would really lay down and die. Music comes from a very primal, twisted place. When a person sings, their body, their mouth, their eyes, their words, their voice says all these unspeakable things that you really can't explain but that mean something anyway. People are completely transformed when they sing; people look like that when they sing or when they make love. But it's a weird thing—at the end of the night I feel strange, because I feel I've told everybody all my secrets.

I don't want my reputation to take me over, I just want to be judged on my songs. I want people to come and see me because they want to, not because fashion dictates it.

There is no good singing, there is only present and absent.

But music seems to me to be the most closely identified with my soul. I mean, I feel that it’s the best for me. It just gets into the bloodstream so quickly, for no reason at all. You can close your heart, and you can sleep even with your eyes closed, but you can never close your ears.