Songwriting is the other weight on the opposite side of the scale from touring. They balance me out creatively.

I love the idea of stepping out of the band situation into a solo world with no boundaries, no expectations, where nothing is out of bounds.

Around '75 when the recession hit, club owners started going to disco because it was cheaper for them to just buy a sound system than it was to hire a band.

Success is fickle, but creativity is a gift.

When I was about 3, my grandfather used to give me and my sister a nickel to sit out on the front porch with him and sing songs.

I'm not the kind of guy who deserves to play a vintage guitar because I'm too rough on instruments.

It was more fun trying to figure out I Want To Hold Your Hand than to take lessons. By this time I knew basic chords

I wish I had a nickel for every song that I've left in the bathroom, written down on a matchbox, or just totally forgotten about

On acoustic guitar I tend to stay in the key of D for some reason. On electric guitar I keep basic: C, G, D, and A. The key of D minor is also real good for me.

If I have an idea, I write it down, although I usually carry a little dictation machine with me because I'm too lazy to write

I wrote songs all my life, where anyone wanted to hear them or not.

I spent the first fourteen years of my life convinced that my looks were hideous. Adolescence is painful for everyone, I know, but mine was plain weird.

What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to choose life.

I spent my whole life figuring out how to get out of work. I would say I was intelligent, but intelligent in a very surreptitious, invisible way.

That is the mystery of grace: it never comes too late.

Humor prevents a hardening of the attitudes.

My first job was working in a dress shop in Los Angeles in 1940, for $7 a week.

My nickname is Dickie Jukebox. I own thousands and thousands and thousands of songs.

The biggest thing is getting our guys to understand, you can't let one mistake compound into another mistake

Success leaves clues. Go figure out what someone who was successful did, and model it. Improve it, but learn their steps. They have knowledge.

It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.