I think that humans have a huge capacity to carry pain and sadness. There are things that haunt us our entire lives; we are unable to let them go. The good times seem almost effervescent and dreamlike in comparison with the times that didn't go so well.

For a long time, when I was very young, I went to go see arena rock bands. I was 16, and it was all I could get in to see, legally. And I saw Led Zeppelin and Ted Nugent and Van Halen and all that.

Live music is the cure for what ails ya.

With any advent in technology, any technological innovation, there is the good and the bad.

So I'm more at home with my backpack, sleeping in a hotel room or on a bus or on an airplane, than I am necessarily on a bed. It's weird being here. It feels like I'm standing next to my real life.

The only difference between me and others is that they think they can change something with cute little poems, nice cards or embracing trees and being nice to little lapdogs.

I don't want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride.

Guns are part of the American identity.

Could it be that violence is as much a part of the American identity as the Constitution, and a vital component to its economic stability?

Where there is young people and vitality, you're going to find punk rock.

I don't mind The Boss. I think he's an honest guy. I have some of his records, not all of them. I've met a couple of the E-Street guys, and they seem really cool.

I am an optimist because I want to change things for the better and I know that blood has to be spilled and disharmony and cruelty are necessary to do that.

I'm 36 and if I met a woman of my own age and married her, I'd also be marrying her former life, her past. It might be OK for some people - I don't want to judge it or anything - but it's not for me. It would destroy my creativity.

When I'm off the road, and I can really control my diet down to the calorie, I juice seven days a week. Every afternoon, whatever I have at hand, beets, carrots, ginger, whatever. I juice, literally, every single day. And on the road, I try to find fresh juice wherever I can.

I think it's important to have some documentation of the past.

I once asked Ozzy Osbourne, truly one of my favorite people in the world, if he was cool with singing Black Sabbath songs year after year, whether he was performing with Black Sabbath or out on a solo tour. He said it was great.

There's tons of junk food for your mind on the Internet. You can sit there for three or 10 or 20 hours a day getting in online arguments with other people who also choose to waste their time.

I don't think you'll ever have a perfect world because we humans are prone to error, and so we're always in search of an upgrade.

I am a veteran of the War on Christmas. I am just emerging from a battlefield strewn with dead trees and torn shreds of brightly colored wrapping paper.

August, the summer's last messenger of misery, is a hollow actor.

Creating problems is easy. We do it all the time. Finding solutions, ones that last and produce good results, requires guts and care.

I'm of the opinion that the Democrats have the ideas I agree with more often than not. Reenergizing the middle class and giving people a break.

Change is hard, but change is good.

Jazz music is as American as it gets, and so is the U.S. Postal Service. A Miles Davis stamp is a perfect marriage of two great American institutions.

I don't know how much you follow current events. For some, there's not enough time to keep up on what's happening; for others, the news is too depressing, and peering too deeply fills one with boiling frustration all too quickly.

It is only our humanity that can deliver us from the brutality of our achievements.

The Ruts were a great punk rock band from England whose songs were as excellent as their time together was short.

My laptop seems to know where I am, even if I don't. My cellphone asks me if I want directions to anywhere from the spot I am standing in. I buy a record online and Amazon.com sends me letters, telling me that people who bought what I bought also bought these other records.

Russia is tough. The history, the land, the people - brutal.

Musicians should not play music. Music should play musicians.

I've been on 'Jay Leno,' and everyone likes Jay, but being on that show is a really boring afternoon. I sincerely like Jay, but I wouldn't want his job, because I'd have to interview Kathy Ireland, and there's nothing there I'd want to know.

To hate is to show you still care, who needs that, focus on what's really important.

I mean I appreciate fan mail and that the people like what I am doing but I can't answer it. If I would answer 25 letters a day I would be just a guy answering mail and not an artist anymore.

Now and then, someone is able to look at an empty space, conclude it would be a great place to start a revolution, and bravely go forward.

Amy Winehouse was not a person I ever met, and I can't say that I am overly conversant in all of her music. I do have her albums, and years ago, when I first heard her sing, I thought she was extraordinary. The tone of her voice, her phrasing, her raw appearance - these qualities were extremely captivating to me.

One person's roar is another's whine, just as one person's music is another's unendurable noise.

One person's disaster is another person's talking point.

I'm not interested in censorship. I like the First Amendment very much.

The fact is, in the minds of many, Trayvon Martin received the appropriate punishment for a true crime: He was black, male and dared to walk outside. In life, young Trayvon was just a teenager; in death, he has been transformed into a scary, lurking, suspicious, prone-to-violence spook.

A text conversation is a short exchange of often grossly truncated language that corresponds to a thought made all the more shallow by the process.

I consider any gun that can chamber a round and send a projectile down its barrel at a high rate of speed into my body - causing me injury or death - to be an assault weapon.

In the summer of 1991, I was on the first Lollapalooza tour. Nightly, I would watch Jane's Addiction singer Perry Farrell go out in front of a sea of people and within minutes have all of them in the palm of his hand. I have never seen anything like it since.

The public library system of the United States is worth preserving.

The prison-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex are here with us and are multi-billion dollar enterprises. We can make more money off the kid in Compton if he's a criminal instead of a scholar. It's business.

It has been hard to get my head around how Justice Antonin Scalia rationalizes his decisions. His body blow to the Voting Rights Act was a head scratcher, but at least he was calm when he attempted to justify his odd logic.

The ecstatic insanity of romantic pursuit can be so enhanced by music that entire romantic conquests, victories and ruinous, crushing defeats can be tied to songs to such a degree that it's almost unbearable to listen to them again, as they bring back the memories so vividly.

I believe that contentment or any sustained period of joy that doesn't inspire thought that leads to action almost immediately is useless.

I just get things done instead of talking about getting them done. I don't go out and party. I don't smoke, drink or do drugs and I'm not married, that leaves a lot of time for my work.

I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.

Most of the people who call me a sellout were 7 when I was down face-first in the punk trenches.