One of my strongest memories is my father playing bongos in the living room in Detroit listening to Motown radio. He was this skinny white bald guy, but he was really moved by blues and Motown and funk.

I'm from the generation that's always been recording, from the very beginning. I learned to play the guitar on the four-track. I started listening to music at a time when people were doing recording at home, when the discussion about songwriting correlated to the discussion about producing and engineering. I think that's a description of my generation.

I think musicians should stay off television generally.

Everyone suffers; life is pain; and death is the final punctuation at the end of that sentence, so deal with it. I really think you can manage pain and suffering by living in fullness and being true to yourself and all those seemingly vapid platitudes.

I'm terrified of just being myself because I think it's boring. I know who I really am and I think it's boring.

We live in a world that is cruel to the earth itself. Man is a biological terrorist.

There is nothing more incredible and moving and appealing than good music, and it cannot always be reduced to a story, to exposition. It's so much more abstract and brilliant.