When I was in high school, The Dave Matthews Band was a local band, and that was the first time I was starting to connect with a live band that was something that wasn't on the radio or TV.

I'm not a virtuoso on an instrument. You know, I'm not always singing in pitch. I laugh sometimes my way through the shows, but I'm an honest songwriter who's always tried to bring the audience with me on my journey in hopes that they see their own lives reflected in the work.

My parents dreaded the fact that I was changing my life to do this, but I just kept doing it.

It's from being melancholy and having my human down experiences that I learn, that I overcome, that I transform - and these realizations I put into song. That's what I choose to put in my backpack and carry with me around the world.

I meet people every single day who have heard the music and incorporated it into their lives. I feel like I have a tribe all around the world.

My goal is to show everyone that they, too, can do what they love to do.

I want to be surrounded by women, I want to be snuggled and cuddled and pampered.

If you have nothing but love for your avocados, and you take joy in turning them into guacamole, all you need is someone to share it with.

I love getting to bounce around and explore so much. I love Scandinavia. I love Spain. It's so mystical and romantic, yet it's gritty.

I think it's important to earn your fan base and not just try to immediately advance to the top. If you ride to the top quickly, you're liable to fall as quickly. Take your time. It's a long journey ahead of you as an artist. There's nowhere that you're supposed to be other than right now living inside of your art.

I'm actually no longer a strict vegan. I don't hang out in the cheese section - I don't even eat cheese. I don't drink milk. But every once in a while I'll have an egg. I'm going to eat eggs that come out of my next-door neighbor's farm, that's just the way it is.

I call it sacred geometry. When everything's just right and it feels really balanced, so that when it unfolds to the next part, you feel totally familiar and at ease within the song.

In the words of Michael Jackson: I'm a lover, not a fighter.

I'm totally into new age and self-help books. I used to work in a bookstore and that's the section they gave me, and I got way into it. I just loved the power of positive thinking, letting yourself go.

Music is a weapon in the war against unhappiness.

Surrender to life itself and you'll just be rewarded with so many things. And I've been rewarded so many times, in so many mysterious ways. So I have no reason to be disappointed with anything.

I'm trying to be more of a gentleman.

Equality and separation cannot exist in the same space.

Two halves don't make a whole. Two wholes make a whole. In my relationship, I was giving myself away to make the relationship better, but in actuality, wasn't doing better by doing that. I became less of a man.

Most of the people that I spend my time around are people who listen to a whole lot of different kinds of music.

My wife and I both grew up with parents who were very young. Her mom was, I think, 17 or 18 when she was born; my mom was 15 when I was born. So, as we got older, we started thinking a lot about that - about the time that those people missed because we came along when we did and because they devoted so much of their lives to taking care of us.

No matter what you thought your plans were, that's not how things are going to work out, and that's the only way you can really, I think, live successfully.

If you're going to write, you're going to have to force yourself to really study the world.

I'm not a big AA guy, but I'll go every once in a while. They do tell you that going out and helping other people really helps you a lot. It seems like a simple thing to say, but it's really true.