Melinda was mine 'til the time that I found her holding Jim, loving him.

Songwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory.

Chelsea Morning is a great Joni Mitchell song and I guess I'm partial to her lyrics because they show me a slightly different perspective on life.

When you're on a merry-go-round, you miss a lot of the scenery.

Songs are life in 80 words or less.

Brooklyn is not the easiest place to grow up in, although I wouldn't change that experience for anything.

Love is still a simple act of faith, and a faithful heart is always worth the wait.

The music is key. It has the power to transport you. I go from being a slightly insecure, shy kind of a person offstage, to this super-confident, motivated, entity onstage.

Performing is the easiest part of what I do, and songwriting is the hardest.

Then come and as we lay, beside this sleepy glade, there I will sing to you my Longfellow serenade.

Drop your shrink and stop your drinkin', crunchy granola's neat.

Poor fellow, he suffers from files.

You're still going to win with preparation and dedication and plain old desire. If you don't have genuine desire, you won't be dedicated enough to prepare properly.

The dirty little secret of publishing is that, all along, each book sold has had an average of 5 readers. That's an 80% "piracy" rate if you insist on looking at it in those terms.

When you're at the top, there's only one way to go.

What you expect is what you will get.

The whole thing about rock music, pop music, is it's really for kids.

As countries get rich they start increasing education and the very educated people tend to not like trial and error, because they think they're obligated to use the body of knowledge they have.

Writers from the majority can assume their audiences know what they're talking about - they don't have to explain things, whereas minority writers are expected to.

Anyone who knows the history of the Pete Best Band or the Combo, we were on the verge of breaking in in America. In the mid-'60s, I had great songwriters; we wrote some great stuff.

They say everybody gets 15 minutes. I hope I'm just inside the first minute and the next 14 go really slow.