We are the most brutal with the people we love the most.

Whenever people ask me how I manage to get through this whole crazy time of being incredibly famous and sort of an icon and supposedly a role model and all of this insanity, I always cite my family and then books. I don't know what I would have done without books.

If you leave home for a while ... you question the conventional wisdom you've grown up with. That doesn't mean you have to change your opinions or who you are, but it's good to ask the questions.

It's the universal feeling that we all are alone - that we're all different. I think the movie's one resounding theme is that everybody feels the same, and we're all alone together. Some people come up to me on the street and thank me for helping them get through their teen years.

When I was turning 40, I felt that there were no books out there that hit the spot in terms of what I wanted to read.

My dad has always just had a lot of faith in me as an artist and as a person, and he doesn't really dispense with a lot of advice when it comes to the music. He's taught me a lot over the years, but when I was taking on this project he's really hands-off about that. He just appreciates what I've done and is very supportive, and of course really proud.

The wonderful thing about books is you never run out of them, you can just keep going. So I'm always finding new writers, or old writers that I just happen not to have read.