Songs are like anything else – they dictate to you which ones go together and which ones don’t.

I don’t want to tell what the songs are about for me, because then people can’t decide for themselves, which is why I write; it’s for you to find your own meaning in. For me it’s my story, for someone else it’s theirs; if I tell exactly what it means, then it’s only my story.

It’s a beautiful thing, to start over.

I’ve spent my life playing music.

For me, there’s no point in being an artist and putting yourself out there if you’re not going to really put yourself out there.

My friend Danny Clinch, who‘s a photographer, gave me a big, signed, numbered print of a photo he took of Eddie Vedder in Seattle. It’s hung in my writing room where I have posters of writers that inspire me. They’re all pointing at me. Tom Waits is like, ‘Don’t sell out!’

I don’t go to rock bars. Why would I go to rock bars? I can do that every night; it’s boring.

When I first started fingerpicking, the first thing I learned was ‘Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright‘ from Bob Dylan.

Shoes are everything. You can tell more about a man from his shoes than his handshake, because they tell where you’re going.

When you’re older, you realize a little bit more hard truths. You are who you are. And the people that like you, they like you for being you.

Fans look up to us, and that’s creepy.

There is redemption in every song.

Going out and trying new stuff on an audience is a scary thing.

When Tupac came out, my writing changed for sure. I learned from it. It was a cultural thing.

There’s never going to be a new Beatles because we don’t consume things in that way anymore.

I’ve always said it’s easier for bands to make a hard stance – like, we don’t do commercials or whatever, blah blah blah – when you’ve sold billions of records. It’s super-easy to be righteous when you’re rich.

A lot of people get writer‘s block, and I think you just have to show up for work, sit down, and be like, ‘I’m here.’ You have to stay confident and positive that you’re going to write something.

Where I live, every band ever comes through, and you can see anything you want, pretty much.

I’ll probably continue to write about heartbreak forever. That stuff doesn’t go away as you get older.

You’re always trying to make each record more autobiographical than the last one.

I don’t want to be the mayor of New Jersey.

You never get away from that thing in your hometown that it has over you. You don’t outgrow where you come from.

You can’t shape it. You can’t change it. Your life is what it is.

I’m not really into the numbers game of, like, what position our record is. But you find out at the end, you know? You’re like ‘Oh, all right! That’s good!’ We had a Number Three record. That’s crazy! What’s that about? That’s exciting to me! I think that’s good.

I don’t mean it egotistically, but I’ve been given the chance to be in front of people and sing, and I feel that it’s part of my job and my duty – especially where I’m from – to speak the language of the people I’m around and speak for them.

I went to the Louvre in Paris, and I saw all the paintings and the Mona Lisa. You don’t really see something like that every day. I was looking at it, and everything else in the room just shut out. Like, Leonardo Da Vinci painted this thing – this is unreal that he touched that. It had this crazy effect on me.

It’s always Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Waits for me – the big three.

When ‘American Slang‘ came out, everyone was like, ‘This is the next big band in the world, and this is blah blah blah Bruce Springsteen Junior and blah blah blah,’ and I was just like, ‘I don’t know what that means. I don’t know. We’ll see.’

I’m on the phone with this guy, and he says to me, ‘People compare you to Bruce Springsteen. I don’t think you’ve written a song as good as ‘Dancing in the Dark‘ or ‘I’m on Fire.” And all I could think was, ‘Me neither!’

There’s no way I’m going to write for other people.

I can’t really see myself writing about politics because I’m not really into it, and one of the worst things you can do is write about things you’re not into.

I grew up in the next town over from Asbury Park and five streets from E Street. My mother fed me ‘Born To Run‘ with my Cheerios.

I think Green Day’s ‘American Idiot‘ is probably the best comeback or mid-career record that any band has done.

When you finish a record, I look at it like a photograph. It’s already taken. You got it the way you wanted it to be. You edit it, make sure the light and contrast are right, then you just put it away, and that’s your photograph. Then you don’t really think about it anymore.

We built something very special with Gaslight, and we don’t want to mess with that sound too much. But I’ve always wanted to do a record where I can put strings or organs or pianos or whatever on it.

People don’t remember that during the Fifties and Sixties there was a Cold War, and kids were getting under their desks during school because they thought they were going to get bombed. So it wasn’t really that ideal at all.

The Clash will always be from London, and we will always be from New Jersey. But New Jersey doesn’t create us.

I’m one of those people who, even if I’m invited somewhere, I still kinda feel like I’m not supposed to be there.

I like building houses, working as a carpenter, painting. You work with your hands to the best of your ability, and at the end of the day, you go home with some satisfaction: ‘I built that!’

Everyone should see ‘A Nightmare Before Christmas,’ hear ‘London Calling,’ and read ‘Great Expectations.’

When you write a lot of songs, sometimes you don’t have a place for them, and you need an outlet for them.

You can learn a lot if you become a student of what’s happening to you.

Everyone always says, ‘We don’t want to be pigeonholed.’ But sometimes, your pigeonhole is a great place to be.

There can be a wrong time – it’s happened to countless bands where they release their first record on a major label and never learned what they maybe should have learned on an indie.