Music is like a huge release of tension.
Never give up, never slow down, never grow old and never ever die young.
Being on a boat that's moving through the water, it's so clear. Everything falls into place in terms of what's important and what's not.
I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.
If I were to try to identify a turning point I'd say that was it - getting clean.
It is a process of discovery. It's being quiet enough and undisturbed enough for a period of time so that the songs can begin to sort of peek out, and you begin to have emotional experiences in a musical way.
A concert is always like a feast day to me.
Once you get that two-way energy thing going, everyone benefits hugely.
I find it a lot healthier for me to be someplace where I can go outside in my bare feet.
You have to choose whether to love yourself or not.
Photographers and reporters are mostly after me. They want to know what I read and what I'm like and I don't really know myself, so how can I tell them?
When I cleaned up some 17 odd years ago, I felt terrible for about six months. The only thing that gave me any real relief was strenuous physical activity.
If the gig's going really well, I'm incredibly happy on stage and really feel good about my life and things.
I think that we're all totally isolated beings and always will be.
I don't know much about God. But if everything does originate with God, then certainly songs do as well.
Songwriting is too mysterious and uncontrolled a process for me to direct it towards any one thing.
When you write a song, it may come from a personal space, but it very seldom actually represents you. It comes out of a sort of mood of melancholy, somehow. It's almost theatrical.
There'll come a writing phase where you have to defend the time, unplug the phone and put in the hours to get it done.
Somehow it helps just to take something that's internal and externalize it, to see it in front of you.
It's probably foolish to expect relationships to go on forever and to say that because something only lasts 10 years, it's a failure.
I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.
I had a very moral upbringing, and spiritual in a sort of not very specific way.
To me, very much of what is artistic is people's very creative and inventive ways out of impossible situations.
Ireland, Italy and Brazil are the most musical places for me. They're extremely musical cultures and anything you pitch they basically catch.
Sobering up was responsible for breaking up my marriage. That's what it couldn't stand.
I believe musicians have a duty, a responsibility to reach out, to share your love or pain with others.
It is the most delightful thing that ever happens to me, when I hear something coming out of my guitar and out of my mouth that wasn't there before.
I am myself for a living. I don't animate a character.
If you're an addict, it controls your life and your life becomes uncontrollable. It's boring and painful, filling your system with something that makes you stare at your shoes for six hours.
I believe 100 percent in the power and importance of music.