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" Self-editing is the way I write. Ten verses of a song and it's finished. Then we start playing it and if I see that it's too long, I'll start cutting. "

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" People are always surprised to see clues to my being a normal kind of guy. As if I'm somehow letting the team down. "

" The band is a living, breathing thing. It grows in the same way we do as human beings and if it doesn't, it dies. It's important to feed the organism, and one way of doing that is to set musical challenges that keep it alive. "

" The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song. What do I write about? I never know. "

" I'm not a misogynist, so you can dispense with that. I think I've done wonders for the feminist movement. "

" I love being manipulated by what I see. I love weepies and romantic comedies where you're reaching for the Kleenex at the right moment. "

" I'm a big fan of teatowels and am always on the lookout for a good one. "

" Most screen violence is tedious. "

" Musicians are at the bottom of the creative pyramid and authors are at the top, and many people think it's unacceptable for someone to attempt to jump from the bottom to the top of the pyramid. "

" I'm a kind of hard-wired pessimist. I can't help but see the world in a certain kind of way. "

" I consider myself to be first and foremost a comic writer. The way I entertain myself - especially in those long and grim hours in the office - is to write stuff I find funny. "

" The problem with books, now that I've written one, is that the idea of adaptation is so much easier than sitting down to write something new. "

" I always thought my records were number one; it's just the charts didn't think so. "

" I've watched 'Oprah Winfrey.' And I'm proud. I don't care what anybody says! I don't know whether I've watched it. I've been in the room while it's been on. "

" I write a lot, and very often I write a couple of lines that are particularly revealing in some kind of way. And then as a few more lines get added and a piece gets added, eventually the song pretty much takes over and you can't really find a way to change those things. "

" The work ethic at art school is completely different than the work ethic amongst people who get into music. People who paint, it's an honorable thing to spend all day and all night in front of your canvas - that is the romantic vision of the painter. "

" One of my big fears is drying up, and the more I create, the more I feel myself shrinking beneath the backlog of work I've done. "

" Early on I realized when you write a song about someone, it flatters them on some level, and gives you a lot of room to move within a relationship. A song can kind of get the girl, for sure. "

" I have a very strange relationship in general with women around my music. There's some that understand it and some that think there should be a law against it. "

" Moving to the country is a very bold thing to do. You can have vague romantic notions about doing that, but in actuality, it can be a terrifying thing. "

" My father was a teacher and my mother also worked in the school, so the family has a background in education. "

" What you're really after when you see a film or listen to a song is a singular vision, and I'm not sure how much of that you really get in Hollywood. "

" Writing is a necessary thing for me, just to keep myself level. It has beneficial effects on my life. "

" Certainly being proficient in an instrument does have its problems. Because the better you get, the more you just start sounding like an ordinary guitarist. There are certainly guitarists that transcend that and do really find their sound and all that sort of stuff. "

" I've always had an obligation to creation, above all. "

" Most people wait for the muse to turn up. That's terribly unreliable. I have to sit down and pursue the muse by attempting to work. "

" I lost my innocence with Johnny Cash. I used to watch the 'Johnny Cash Show' on television in Wangaratta when I was about 9 or 10 years old. At that stage I had really no idea about rock n' roll. I watched him, and from that point I saw that music could be an evil thing - a beautiful, evil thing. "

" Guns are part of the American psyche, aren't they? This is collateral damage for having a Wild West mentality. It's intrinsic to the American psyche. It's never going to change. "

" The idea of acting is something that absolutely repulses me. I just can't do it. I'm terrible at it. I get roped into films every now and then, and it's always a disaster. "

" A rock musician's career is short-lived. To extend it, you need to do other things to keep yourself fresh. "

" After a while, you just don't do things you don't wanna do - that's the great freedom you get, the older you get. You learn what to do and what not to do, and what will be a waste of time and what won't be a waste of time. "