The secret to longevity in the music business is to change, and to be able to change. [...] An actor has to assume other people's identities. A rock star doesn't need to do that. [...] But change is important.

I love performing. I can get to be that person I always wanted to be - godlike.

Sometimes the song isn't strong enough to contain the fiction, because memories are fictions.

I'm not religious, and I'm not a Christian, but I do reserve the right to believe in the possibility of a god.

No fish can swim until the King is born, until the King is born in Tupelo.

Love songs come in many guises and are seemingly written for many reasons – as declarations or to wound – I have written songs for all of these reasons – but ultimately the love songs exist to fill, with language, the silence between ourselves and God, to decrease the distance between the temporal and the divine.

The society of whores stuck needles in an image of me.