When you just get mixed up & there's too much going on, then it's time to pick up your guitar.

Now I need to take a piece of wood and make it sound like the railroad track, but I also had to make it beautiful and lovable so that a person playing it would think of it in terms of his mistress, a bartender, his wife, a good psychiatrist - whatever.

..I wanted to create music that was so different that my mother could tell me from anyone else

A guitar is something you can hold and love and it's never going to bug you. But here's the secret about the guitar - it's defiant. It will never let you conquer it. The more you get involved with it, the more you realize how little you know.

You can't go to the store and buy a good ear and rhythm.

To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren't any.

If I have to go around telling everyone how great I am, then there's something wrong with my act.