There was always a guitar hanging around the house when I was a kid. It was a much lower impact instrument than me playing the drums, which is what I really wanted to do. My mother put a stop to the drumming.

So what if America loses its empire? We never should have had one in the first place.

I've written songs everywhere, and I think the place does matter.

I got really sick of playing just, like, 'Bop-bop-bop-bada-bop-bop-bada-rapa-pah.' Just playing that 190-beats-per-minute punk-rock songs, I didn't feel it anymore. And I always loved melody - when you looked back on those early records, there's always a hook buried in there somewhere.

Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.

I was never afraid of failure after that because, I think, coming that close to death you get kissed. With the years, the actual experience of course fades, but the flavor of it doesn't. I just had a real sense of what choice do I have but to live fully?

As a child, I spent a lot of time alone. I used to sit in my closet with one cracker. I'd pretend that I was on the North Pole freezing to death, and I had to somehow survive on this one tiny cracker.

There are many dying children out there whose last wish is to meet me.