If I would not be able to create music, I would create art or something else. Perhaps cooking.

Once you encounter people who are really testing the limits of kindness, that's when you start to build up a shield and close yourself down.

Music is my only guide. I don't care if people pigeonhole me. Miles Davis is my hero. He covered Cindy Lauper and Michael Jackson, and he didn't give a hoot about what the purists said.

It's very limiting to us as a species, the concept of better-than/less-than. It just seems to be at its end. I'm like, this all fades to black, and it's gone. It's dust. Choose carefully what you obsess about.

It's interesting to do other people's music - that's how I learned to play, by learning other people's songs. It's nice to delve into how other people got to where they are.

There's no hierarchy in suffering. I think songs that are transcendent are the ones where everyone can feel something from it, you know?

Not to be a Bible-thumper, but there really is nothing new under the sun.