I love America. I really do. It's by far the place I like visiting out of anywhere in the world. I get a palpable sense of excitement when the plane's landing. It's a cliché, but there's still an incredible energy about New York in particular.

L.A. is full of screenwriters. I don't know why. On many levels, it's such a thankless occupation.

You write a scene, and it works or it doesn't. It's immediate.

I always thought my records were number one; it's just the charts didn't think so.

Anything that I'm doing I'm writing specifically for a particular project.

I've always been at war with the guitar. All vocalists are fighting a war with the electric rhythm guitar.

The love song must be born into the realm of the irrational, absurd, the distracted, the melancholic, the obsessive, the insane for the love song is the noise of love itself and love is, of course, a form of madness.