“Every sea to scare the sailor, I have sailed.”

“There's no amount of money that makes you feel better when people think of you as a joke or a hack or a failure or ugly or stupid or morally empty.”

“I think you can totally be a totally normal kid from the suburbs of Chicago and go off and play shows. It's one of those things that when you go home, you're still the nerd you were when you left, ...”

“For some people, home is family and their mom's house or their girl or whatever, and I have those experiences as well, but the biggest thing for me is Chicago.”

“Between Prince and my dad's fusion-jazz records, I didn't have a choice in being funky.”

“Its as simple as that. Simple and complicated, as most true things are.”

“Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”

“People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.”

“It is quality rather than quantity that matters.”

“Better to work for yourself alone. You do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself: isnt that the main thing? And then the public is so stupid. Besides, who re...”

“Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.”

“The best incentive for an artist are the harshest criticism”

“I have no idea how to be an artist and a lover, so I chose the one most likely to make me happy when I'm eighty and gazing back on a long and productive life.”

“Artists strive to free this true and spontaneous self in their work. Creativity, meditation are ways of freeing an inner voice.”