I was number 1 on the who's likely to die list for 10 years...I was really disappointed when I fell off that list.

I was number 1 on the who's likely to die list for 10 years...I was really disappointed when I fell off that list.

I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.

Most guys I know are assholes. I have some great asshole friends, but that's not the point. Friendship has got nothing to do with that. It's can you hang, can you talk about this without any feeling of distance between you? Friendship is the diminishing of distance between people. That's what friendship is, and to me it's one of the most important things in the world.

Music works in mysterious ways. Once it goes in you have no idea what it can do to you.

If you don't know the blues... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music.

What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people’s hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you’re playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack.