While you're learning guitar, figure out the drums, too. Not only does it help you have great timing, but it helps you understand how a band works.

Everybody used to be busy writing songs - great songs - that became hits. Now everybody's writing hits. Everybody's desperately writing a hit because they know they can't survive if they don't have a hit. Where in the past, we were writing a song like 'More Than Words' on a porch, not really believing it was gonna be a hit.

When you are in this business and this career, it's hard for any one thing to engulf you.

You don't really write a hit song - you write a great song, and then, if the public decides it's a hit, they take over from there. The song becomes its own monster.

When you admit that you are married, people try to get skeletons out of your closet. They dig into your personal lives and link you with strangers, which could be detrimental. They also want to know details about your marriage, children, and so on. I wanted to keep it private because I only want my work to speak.

Nobody ever asks a father how he manages to combine marriage and a career.

You must have love as the core; it takes courage to be willing to constantly tell the truth to each other and risk letting the relationship go.

Marriage? It's like asparagus eaten with vinaigrette or hollandaise, a matter of taste but of no importance.