I wouldn't want to hear Beethoven without beautiful bass, the cellos, the tuba. It's very important. Hip-hop has thunderous bass. And so does Beethoven. If you don't have the bass, it's like being amputated. It's like you have no legs.

You've gotta blow the roof off of your heart and let the universe in.

I can't do anything I want to. I mean, I can't have my own TV show. I can't have my own movie. But within my little world, nobody tells me what to put on the albums.

I've always believed that there's an amazing number of things you can do through a rock'n'roll song and that you can do serious writing in a rock song if you can somehow do it without losing the beat.

It always bothers me to see people writing RIP when a person dies. It just feels so insincere and like a cop out. To me, RIP is the microwave dinner of posthumous honours.

People didn't know certain things about me, which... I was out of creative writing class in school, Syracuse University; had a B.A. in English and wanted to write the great American novel but I also loved rock and roll. I was in bar bands all through college, playing fraternities and have to know all the songs in the top 10. That kind of thing.

Psychologically, it's better that I think that I'm dirt.