It's not something you can find. There's a moment you arrive at --- there's no words for it. A bunch of people come together at this place where a note hits your heart and your brain tells your finger where to go. It's an otherworldly thing, like when a painter gets the right combination of colors together.

When I see footage of Guns N' Roses, I see that fu**ing hunger and attitude. You could not f**k with those five guys. It was just raw. It was this lean, hungry thing on its way up. It was as sincere as any rock 'n' roll that I've ever heard, and I'm proud of that.

When it comes to actually writing, I like to write in a full room with the amps blasting, and a big drum set.

That's always stuck with me, with music. I've never really gotten jaded about it. I've always loved music for the sake of doing it, and the longer I do it, the more I like it. Hopefully, I'll be able to have that same point of view in this business, or at least with doing this.

Guitar is the best form of self-expression I know. Everything else, and I'm just sort of tripping around, trying to figure my way through life.

A lot of vices that I've had over the years were always to make up for some sort of character deficiency, one of them being shyness.

What does surprise me, though, is the amount of attention this band [Guns'n'Roses] has garnered 11 years after the original lineup broke up. That's an interesting phenomenon. It was even interesting back in the day. I mean, [we were] this glorified garage band. It was a great band, but it was not the kind of band you expected to become what it has.