Have people that listen to you and that you listen to. Helping other people is an amazing means of getting out of yourself, being available to people who are in pain or need help, being connected.

ELIXIR Strings are bright and so sturdy. I'm absolutely in love with them.

In terms of getting super successful, every once in a while, something very different gets successful and than everything that comes after is kind of like it, maybe. That's what happened with Nirvana, which was so out there and changed everything, and then so much after became imitative of them.

It's tragic that extremists co-opt the notion of God, and that hipsters and artists reject spirituality out of hand. I don't have a fixed idea of God. But I feel that it's us - the messed-up, the half-crazy, the burning, the questing - that need God, a lot more than the goody-two-shoes do.

My own experience with that brief moment where I had videos on MTV was that nothing was ever good enough. When you hear people say, "I was unhappy the whole time," that sounds ridiculous. I think this is a theme among people who seek fame, not just musicians. There are a lot of bitter, disappointed people.

My family was reasonably liberal. Some kids I grew up with, their parents forced them to join the military, and my parents never, ever even brought it up. I imagine just looking at me, they were like "Not an army officer."

I was incredibly different as a child from everybody else. But really, I was just who I was. I was born that way.