I looked a little pasty. But hey, at least I didn't wet myself!

Listen to the Bee Gees and you can learn to be a great writer.

I was a pop-music junkie. My parents were into Frank Sinatra and Doris Day. They weren't too excited when I had Aretha or the Stones pumping.

When I look at myself, I'd like not to have hair on the top of the ceiling.

The thing that's tricky is sometimes the best voices - just because someone hits the big notes and sounds amazing - it doesn't necessarily mean they make the greatest artists.

I have breakups that I can credit to every song. In my twenties, I picked people who would create that dysfunction and drama, so I could draw upon it.

Songwriters tell the truth.

Some of the best songs that artists perform year after year are ones they hated.

I felt like I got more comfortable on "Idol" when I just started being myself and not trying to be what I thought I had to be.

I don't go to record stores to look at my albums, but it's always a thrill to see them.

Look at someone like Ke$ha. I wouldn't say she's got the most rangy, incredible voice, but she's got a thing. She stands for something, and people are buying into that.

The image and the costs of a Berlin-like wall or a Great Wall of China is something that the American people have not accepted to date.

Law officials put their lives on the line every single day for us, and I think we also owe them a degree of respect.

The tears of those repenting are the wine of angels.

Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.

But men are less used to the idea of being raped than women are, and it strikes them with a fresh horror. With women, that horror comes right along with the female genitals.

Everybody is exposed to radiation. A little bit more or a little bit less is of no consequence.

Eternity: The interval between the time when a woman discovers that a man is in love with her and the time when he finds it out himself and tells her about it.

Love is an incredible thing but we don't know love like we should. Unconditional love we don't know it because if a person stops stimulating us, we stop loving them.

I do dumb stuff, like playing my favorite dumb Barry White song and lip-synching into the mirror so it looks like his voice is coming out of my mouth.

Isn't it fitting that so many of those who have contempt for the private sector will soon find themselves back in it?