PERSONAL IMPORTANCE or taking things personally, is an expression of SELFISHNESS because we make the assumption that everything is about ME!! NOTHING PEOPLE DO IS BECAUSE OF YOU!! IT'S BECAUSE OF THEMSELVES!!

I think that the best part of music is when it comes from a real place and has an ability to kind of connect on a much larger scale. It no longer is a personal thing, it becomes everyone else's thing as well.

Back then people closed their eyes and listened to music. Today there's a lot of images that go with the music. A lot of music is crap and it's all commercial and the images are all trying to sell the record.

Much serious thought has been devoted to the subject of chocolate: What does chocolate mean? Is the pursuit of chocolate a right or a privilege? Does the notion of chocolate preclude the concept of free will?

When you're doing things like Glastonbury main stage, and there's 80,000 people and your hits are going off, it's at those moments you sit back and breathe and take it in, man, cos it might never happen again.

Styx has their own style of music, and I think that's justifiable, the same way that Asia and Yes have had - Yes particularly has a unique style that seems to have transcended all styles of music for 43 years.

I think the great thing about art is that you can create it anywhere. I made a record of cover tunes on my laptop in hotel rooms throughout Europe last year and it is still very much a "Kasey Anderson" record.

I think this is the beginning of a really cool period in music because what we've been living through has been mostly super-testosterone rock, and there's nothing wrong with testosterone but it is damn boring.

If so much of your experience is devoted to the thought of documentation, you're already sort of spinning out this narrative from this moment that you are attempting to control instead of just experiencing it.

Drugs were pretty easy to quit taking. I was never addicted to anything to begin with. But then, liquor - I had to wait about another six years before I finally got around to quitting that. I'm sure glad I did.

Yes, when I come up with ideas on my own, it's almost always a melody, just as often an instrument or bassline as it is a vocal. But it is a single, linear, monophonic thing. Something you could hum or whistle.

I was so dyslexic as a kid, and still am, and music was such a great form of escape to me. At school I'd keep my head down and try not to get beat up, and then I'd get home and music would be like a drug to me.

I'll never forget getting my first Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chain records, and hearing that wonderful, beautiful darkness. And the rhythmic intensity, that's what attracted me more than anything else.

Sometimes I've found that by getting into a certain drag, or a certain feeling, you can cast off your mortal coil and really do something. I don't know if it's important, but it's something. It's entertainment.

If you don't have customers to sell to, you can't commit to anything with textile factories or manufacturing factories because you don't know if you'll be able to sell the quantities they're asking you to fill.

I love the idea of leaving some of the original abstract thought in, because the problem is that when you pick up a pen you become a snob, your own worse critic. You edit yourself in a way that is non-creative.

A lot of times, I'll have a goal, I'll start writing, and I'll end up in some far off place, which is good. It's nice to have a focus, but letting the lyrics write themselves where they need to go is important.

I'm a pop enigma. I live and breathe every element in life. I rock a bespoke suit and I go to Harold's for fried chicken. It's all these things at once, because, as a taste maker, I find the best of everything.

The main reason he wanted to be a recording artist was because it gives you much more freedom in your writing. You only have to please the artist and the artist is you so you can be more daring and experimental.

There's everybody in the world who is always trying, time and time again, to proclaim the death of rock, or hard rock and heavy metal. Not if I have anything to do with it, not if we have anything to do with it.

I have the best job in the world. I'm able to express myself, and people attach themselves to it if they identify with it. Music certainly is a driving force in my life. There's not a moment where I'm not in it.

We do this basically for ourselves. People appreciate it, which is cool, but I think they appreciate that we're doing it for ourselves. We're doing it our way, and how people like it is not up to us. We like it.

A big marker in my life was realizing you could record sound: I liked to make little recordings and then go back and listen to them. It becomes something outside of you then and you can listen to it objectively.

I'm putting my life at risk, literally! And if I slipped... You never know. And I think about it. I think about my family and I'm like, wow, this is like being a police officer or something, in war or something.

I have no idea who's steering, and I don't really care .. I just keep going whatever the inclination is ... there are threads that are continuous and hold everything together and a major thread is country music.

I think that all music is inherently political, and, at the same time, I'm interested in the politics of inclusion not exclusion. So I think that my goal is to make music that anybody can hear and feel moved by.

I've already had a hard time dealing with some of the trappings of success and turned to some pretty stereotypical escape routes - ways of escaping my own reality and falling into some pretty clichéd situations.

I'm in a place where the audience doesn't have control over my love for the music. In the past I was waiting on the reaction of the fans to tell me whether or not I had a great record based on how they'd respond.

I looked through our catalog year by year, and I saw that there were pockets of time when we wrote some terrific songs. Then all of a sudden, we'd go for another two or three months and there weren't great songs.

The Device experience was amazing. I enjoyed working with everyone that I was blessed with the opportunity to work with, and you learn so much going outside of your normal world and outside your box, so to speak.

When you're a kid, you have this feeling like you're indestructible. Your mortality doesn't even occur to you. But as time goes by, you realize, "I better cut this out or that out if I want to continue to exist."

When you're a kid, you have this feeling like you're indestructible. Your mortality doesn't even occur to you. But as time goes by, you realize, 'I better cut this out or that out if I want to continue to exist.'

You dogs are smart enough to know that worry is something you do with a bone, and let it got at that. Even Pavlov couldn't do any more than prove that your brain is in your gut--something that you knew all along.

I don't just want to put a price tag on pieces because I can. I don't want put a price tag on pieces that are unreasonable either. Just because people might buy it doesn't mean you won't alienate fans eventually.

Jingle bells, jingle bells, Jingle all the way, Oh what fun it is to ride, In a one-horse open sleigh, hey, Jingle bells, jingle bells, Jingle all the way, Oh what fun it is to ride, In a one-horse open sleigh...

People are born with the ability to make judgments. And they can't help but use the information they have to divine something about the world they're in. Making categorical judgments, in large, helps our society.

I was writing for a publishing company in this old building right next to the RCA Victor Studio in Nashville. We were on the top floor, and Combine Music was on the bottom floor. I was friends with all those guys.

What interests me is all the stuff that goes into abstract and abstract-figurative art. Not the styles, but the stuff that, in various combinations, make the styles: mixing and matching painting methods and ideas.

With millions of people creating songs and uploading them to the web internationally, most artists know they need to dismantle the monetary barrier between themselves and the listener or they simply wont be heard.

As kids we used to laugh/Who knew that life would move this fast? Who knew I'd have to look at you through a glass? And look, tell me you ain't did it, you ain't did it And if you did, then that's family business.

The things that I have done that haven't been as successful have been things that have been largely out of the public view, which is great. It's terrible, when you're a theater writer, to have a big flop publicly.

And my parents live down in West Virginia, and I have to drive through the Shenandoah Valley pretty often to go visit them. You actually drive right by Gettysburg and some other spots where there were huge battles.

To a lesser extent (they like) the whites and reds, but blues, yellows and oranges are the main bee flowers. Although there are very good white bee flowers - white sweet clover is the best honey plant in the world.

I was never the guy who was going to try to use my social media to be a source of promotion for myself... It was always trying to use whatever kind of a voice in the position that I have been blessed with for good.

I'm sure as I progress the sound may get cleaner but right now, I'm still interested in having it rough but never overwhelmingly so. I consider myself an amateur pop songwriter and I want that to come through, too.

As long as you have those brilliant songs, it didn't matter how bad you played, or how bad he sang on 'em sometimes. It was one of those magical things that really worked, and I don't think could ever happen again.

I believe that bad taste is vulgar. It's like cursing. I think the world can be saved through design, because what is the most distasteful thing someone can do? Kill someone. So, good taste is the opposite of that.

I got behind that pencil and nothing happened for many years, but since they put me in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, I've turned around. I took a good look at myself and said, I think it's time to get back at work.

When you're traveling on a body of songs that you have played for many, many years, for most nights of your life - I'm sure you've experienced this yourself - it's not that every night is not it's own thing. It is.

You can go watch everything so you can see a transition of someone who is coming into his own. That's what I feel like my music is. I'm finally here, arriving and I know exactly what I want to talk to people about.

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