Hunter S. Thompson

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

I want to keep redefining my work and trying new things. I want my music to be able to fit into any category. I want it to float wherever my heart goes. My music is heart music; giving it any other description is dangerous.

I’m an experimenter. It’s rich because every album I’ve done, except for a couple of techno-y records, are different. Really you’ve got to hand it to the Fender Strat, because there are songs in that guitar. It’s a tool of great inspiration and torture at the same time because it’s forever sitting there challenging you to find something else in it, but it is there if you really search.

In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that no one else has thought of.

You’re just a little too hip for the room. It’s not good to be too hip because two hips make an ass.

..I wanted to create music that was so different that my mother could tell me from anyone else.

You can’t copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, you’re working without any real feeling.

If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

I don’t really live like a musician myself. I think music is just something that I do, but I’d like to be doing lots of other things. I like to cure all kinds of illness.

I can’t listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.

I developed in my head that I’m never any better than my last concert or the last time I played, so it’s like an audition each time. You get nervous just before going onstage. I still have that, but I think it’s more like concern. You’re concerned about the people – like meeting your in-laws for the first time.

I like jazz, rock n’ roll, some hip hop – I can’t think of any music I don’t like.

I never practice my guitar. From time to time I just open the case and throw in a piece of raw meat.

Check out the albums, … Check out the live performances. That’s the reality of it all. Music is such an energizing thing.

We’re not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.

I asked my mother could I have an instrument. She said, ‘Well if you go out and save your money.’ So I went and got – I made me a shine box. I went out and started shining shoes, and I’d bring whatever I made.