I always think of the live show first, where the song is gonna go in the show. That's why they aren't sad songs. When I play, I want to make people happy, not sad. It's such a pleasure for me to do what I do, and I want other people to feel some form of that pleasure, too.

Don't Cry Daddy is a pretty sad song. He got to the end of it and it was just real quiet and Elvis says, I'm gonna cut that someday for my daddy. And, by God, he did. He lived up to his word.

The idea of being a novelist is really romantic, but it's kind of the same as being president of the United States - it's not gonna happen.

If you don't respect me you're not gonna get that respect back.

Be on time, work hard every day, try to help your teammate, look for the team first. If you do that, everybody's gonna respect you.

There was a side of me that knew I was gonna change the game, but I didn't know how many people would respect it.

Don't ever know who you may meet, or just because a person may not be dressed up all fancy, don't mean they're not an important person. You just don't ever know who you're gonna meet in life. So that's why I look at everybody as equal. Can't just judge. I treat everybody with respect. Every man.

There's the conforming 9-to-5-lifestyle thing. Then there's, like, settling down, trying to find a balance in a relationship sense, or having a dog and having a house. All these things, like, they're not really gonna make you happy.

I don't dislike any of my exes. If I took time to form a relationship, it's gonna hurt when we move on, but are you puttin' White-Out over all that beautiful time together? That was real time in your life. It's connected to where you are today.

We ain't gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we're gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we're gonna fight reactionary pigs with international proletarian revolution.

Stage fright is not a thing about 'Am I any good?' It's about 'Am I gonna be good tonight?' It's a right-now thing. It helps me. If I went out there thinkin', 'Eh, we'll go slaughter 'em,' I'm positive something would go seriously wrong.

There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer.

I thought we were gonna open up the world of poetry and music to all kinds of things, and yet, I can't really think of anyone who's done anything like it since.

I'm always gonna do my own thing. I wanna be something - whether I'm 19 years old working at a pet store, or I'm 19 years old with a No. 1 record - I wanna be the biggest I can be to my crowd, no matter what my crowd is.

I have a tremendous amount of patience and tolerance when working with people, but if I ever feel the impulse to inhibit myself from doing one more take, or feel a need to apologize to someone for pushing, I know that that relationship isn't gonna last.

God gives me the children's ministry heart and patience. This is what He wants. It's awesome. I don't know where He's gonna take it - but God is building this thing.

There's no handbook for parenting. So you walk a very fine line as a parent because you are civilizing these raw things. They will tip the coffee over and finger-paint on the table. At some point, you have to say, 'We're gonna have to clean that up because you don't paint with coffee on a table.'

No matter how much time you spend reading books or following your intuition, you're gonna screw it up. Fifty times. You can't do parenting right.

A year from now, you're gonna weigh more or less than what you do right now.

You always gonna feel me. That's my main thing. When I'm speaking in my music, you gotta feel me.

I'm never gonna stop music, it's like air to me.

If you're only a fan of the old music, that music's gonna wind up sounding even older.

I've been in movies where so much of the conversation was about, 'Well, after this movie, you're gonna be the biggest movie star.' I sort of have learned that you never really can predict any of that.

I never wanted to do the same kind of movies over and over anyway, so my theory on it all is I'm just gonna try and dodge the label and keep doing what I am doing.