The kids called me King of the Surf Guitar. I surfed sunup to sundown.

You can't eat fish. It's 6,000 parts DDT per million all over the world, not counting radiation.

I grew a love for helpless, defenseless things. People would give me lions and jaguars. I had cheetahs, monkeys.

I always wanted a guitar. I always wanted to be a cowboy singer because I also listened to Hank Williams, and he would always sing these neat romantic songs.

Buddy Rich was one of the most incredible technicians in the world, on this planet, but the only people he could really impress, who knew what he was doing was another musician or another drummer.

There's a saying. If you want someone to love you forever, buy a dog, feed it and keep it around.

I used to be a mean maniac. Someone once threw a firecracker at a show and I jumped off the side of the stage and whacked 'em on the side of the head.

My uncle gave me a trumpet, but I loved the Louis Armstrong sound and the Harry James sound and I played by ear and I played always soulful or very direct from the gut.

My philosophy is the thicker the wood the thicker the sound, the bigger the string the bigger the sound. My smallest string is a 14 gauge.

I don't play pyrotechnic scales. I play about frustration, patience, anger. Music is an extension of my soul.

Every song is like a painting.

If I had known how good cooked meat tastes, I would have breathed my fire on all those pigs before I ate them.

I always wondered if I was supposed to be excellent at something or not. I think, because of that, I have a lot of insecurities about myself.

Acting is really instinctual and I think you can overanalyse what you're doing. A lot of it has to be based on instinct.

The most important advice I can offer is that writing is a craft that you can learn by practicing. If you keep writing, you will improve.

Celebrate our brief moment in the sun

Love is ultimate, the highest health, because love makes one whole. When you love a master by and by you completely forgot about love.

Never mind the odds against you. If you doubled your effort, what would the odds against you do — send for reinforcements?

In a way, “failure” is just another word for “the journey,” for not being there yet but on the way. It’s the road we walk on to get wherever it is we’re trying to go.

Money is the only thing you can use even if you don't have any. ... There's always a credit card.

If I could only write, I'd write a nasty letter to the mayor, if he could only read.