Quotes

If I could transform my stage life to the movies, I'd be Jack Nicholson.

My father was a classic intellectual. From him I learned devotion, and I also learned about the life of the mind.

From 1965 to 1974, I served the best possible apprenticeship for an actor. I learned firsthand how a truck driver lives, what a bartender does, how a salesman thinks. I had to make a life inside those jobs, not just pretend.

My father had a good sense of humour about a lot of things, including life, which I think I inherited.

I believe that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, increased intelligence, new friends, super self-confidence, heightened sexual attractiveness, and a better sense of humor.

People like Frank Zappa and Bryan Ferry knew we could pick and choose from the history of music, stick things together looking for friction and energy. They were more like playwrights; they invented characters and wrote a life around them.

In my normal life I'm a very unadventurous person.

I've got nothing against records - I've spent my life making them - but they are a kind of historical blip.

The problem with fine art is that in most cases people have to make a special excursion to go and look at it: they can't afford to own it. So it isn't really part of their life in the way that music can be.

I love San Francisco and Brighton has something of San Francisco about it. It's by the sea, there's a big gay community, a feeling of people being there because they enjoy their life there.

It's insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it's assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It's that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he's telling you something about his own life. It's so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

Software options proliferate extremely easily - too easily, in fact - because too many options create tools that can't ever be used intuitively. Intuitive actions confine the detail work to a dedicated part of the brain, leaving the rest of one's mind free to respond with attention and sensitivity to the changing texture of the moment.

You can't shape it. You can't change it. Your life is what it is.

You just have to know your story from the beginning. You have to know what you're going for and be honest with people about that. Don't sit there and say you're gonna be a DIY punk band for your whole life and then move on to arenas; you can't do that because then people don't trust you anymore.

I can't sit still for long and need creative outlets and think you should try different things. I mean, if you're a musician all of your life, you gotta try different things. I really believe you can have it all.

I've spent my life playing music.

There's instances where you do everything right and you work hard and things don't work out. That's part of life, and it ends up being life lessons for some guys.

We've all got to deal with adversity in life. It's something that's not new to me.

Well, there are a lot of things outside our control - outside my control. And this is true with anybody's life: You try to keep the train on a certain track, and then there are a lot of moving parts that you can't control. And that tends to make you nervous.

Everything is pretty good in my life, and like everybody else, things happen, and you put your head down and solve challenges.

We don't have entitlements as part of our family heritage. If you want nice things in life, if you want to get ahead, you have to earn it.

I've led a very middle-class, very boring kind of life.

Curiosity and creating ideas ironically are both democratized; they cost no money, anyone can do them, and it's up the individual and the force of their personality to give life to them.

They say that life is tough enough. But I guess I like to make things difficult on myself, because I do that all the time. Every day and on purpose. That's because I believe in disrupting my comfort zone.

In Hollywood, people tend to have the same sensibilities, the same taste and values, and I didn't want to spend my life that way. I wanted to have a bigger, more interesting life.