You can't really get the full joy out of life unless you really go for it. You just have to go into it and stay under some kind of hope or illusion that it's going to work. But as you get older, or the more experiences you have, or whatever it is that tells you how this stuff works, you also know that if you go all the way into it, there's the risk of losing everything but you don't have a choice.

To try to please people is an endless chasing of one's own tail. That's not very satisfying, so we do what we like and that satisfies us. When it does work out, its a bonus, really.

I got very lucky that some of the things that I wanted to work did work. Not because I knew what I was doing, just through dumb luck, it just looked beautiful and sounded great and captured some magical mood. And you just have to hope that you get lucky when you do big things like making a movie, or something.

I think when people think of music from coming from Oklahoma, they think of Toby Keith or even Garth Brooks or even Woody Guthrie. People think, "Why do we have to just be about the Bible and about football? Why can't we be about something like the Flaming Lips?" And I salute them! I say, "Well, that's great if you want that."

Eating good things and being around people who are happy - you want to be influenced by the world because it has so many cool things about it, but it also has a bunch of bad things about it. Being around people who are happy and people who are creative, that's what you do if you're lucky in your life.

Maybe there's some unquenchable question that I keep asking the universe that I can't get an answer to.

Everything that you do in your life that helps you sweat is good for you. Whenever you're sweating, you're adding to your potential to enjoy the day or enjoy the moment or enjoy your life.