The best music happens when you have a personal connection to it. That same philosophy can extend to the instrument you hold in your hands: if a guitar means something special, you're bound to do great things with it.

When you break it all down, my punk rock is my dad's blues. It's music from the underground, and it's real, and it's written for the downtrodden in uncertain times.

A guitar solo in the same part of every tune - that's been done so much. I think solos shine more when you have them in specific and unexpected places.

These days, all we hear about is that the industry is in trouble. Everybody is so scared, but our mission statement is having no fear.

The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture.

An album is a whole universe, and the recording studio is a three-dimensional kind of art space that I can fill with sound. Just as the album art and videos are ways of adding more dimensions to the words and music. I like to be involved in all of it because it's all of a piece.

It takes as much imagination to create debt as to create income.

We are cutting things kids like-music, art, and gym classes; stuff that kept me in school. This country can't survive without you kids. It's all about you kids.