A guy and a girl can be just friends, but at one point or another, they will fall for each other... maybe temporarily, maybe at the wrong time, maybe too late, or maybe forever.
Dave Matthews
Nothing is black or white, nothing's 'us or them.' But then there are magical, beautiful things in the world. There's incredible acts of kindness and bravery, and in the most unlikely places, and it gives you hope.
I'll lean on you and you lean on me and we'll be okay.
Take what you can from your dreams, make them as real as anything.
The saddest part of the human race is we're obsessed with this idea of 'us and them,' which is really a no-win situation, whether it's racial, cultural, religious or political.
Tomorrow is no place to place your better days.
Good music is good music, and everything else can go to hell.
A friend is always good to have, but a lover's kiss is better than angels raining down on me.
I'm partly obsessed by aging gracefully.
South Africa gives me a perspective of what's real and what's not real. So I go back to South Africa to both lose myself and gain awareness of myself. Every time I go back, it doesn't take long for me to get caught into a very different thing. A very different sense of myself.
I use God in my songs a lot but I don't have a relationship. I don't know what that means.
I think I am a very kind person. I think I'm joyful, but I could be kinder and I could be more joyful. I do believe peace is a state of grace, and not the absence of violence.
How could I have been anyone other than me?
I think I'm probably a very sad man wrapped in a very joyful package, and I think I'm very resilient, and I think I'm quite generous, sometimes to a fault. And I'm very bad with money, but I don't see that too much of a flaw.
We give the podium to a lot of people who shouldn't have the podium. The message that's delivered the loudest and in the most entertaining way is the one that we're going to put on because that's what we want. We want ratings more than we want to deliver information. That's just where the culture's gotten.
There's a freedom to being young that is harder to come by as time goes on.
The idea of God as a fatherly figure who looks down on us and worries about how we're doing or takes sides when we have fights - it's more irritating than Santa Claus. The world and the universe are far more wonderful if there's not a puppet master.
There's war - there's always been war, as long as most of us have been alive. There have always been people being abused, there's always been horrible things in the world. Why are we outraged? We should just be quiet and figure it out, and work it out together.
I'm familiar with that feeling of silence that comes with a very imminent catastrophe, when you know you have absolutely no control over a situation.
I don't believe in trickle-down economics. I don't think that people who have the most are inclined to share it, generally.
I don't think everything is going to get peachy ever. But I think we have to fight for what we believe in.
Success turns a lot of people off. I have a pretty solid sense of joy and respect that irritates people, and can irritate me, too.
When I listen to my favorite songwriters, they have such simple melodies and chords. I occasionally manage to stop at the right time, but all too often I keep on going until I have way too many notes and words. But that's just what I do.
I was regularly advised not to go into music, that I should give up that foolish dream.
Well, I've been in a few car wrecks.
The world and the universe are far more wonderful if there's not a puppet master.
You wear nothing but you wear it so well.
My songs are like a three-legged dog - you have to get to know them to have any love for them.
I want to figure out a way to not be stupid with money, then make a whole bunch of it, then I want to move to Outer Mongolia. I want to milk a yak. Maybe I'll just settle for a cow. Can you milk a bison?
In so many areas of life, I'm a spaz and incompetent.
For me, in songwriting, I have a route I can take. Maybe there's some forks, I can go this way, this way. But I know those roads. I still have the experience behind me.
I can't believe that we would lie in our graves wondering if we had spent our living days well. I can't believe that we would lie in our graves dreaming of things that we might have been.
I found there's a fairly blatant racism in America that's already there, and I don't think I noticed it when I lived here as a kid. But when I went back to South Africa, and then it's sort of thrust in your face, and then came back here - I just see it everywhere.
I don't think socialism, and I don't think warmness and respect are necessarily bad words.
I fear that our true motivation is about oil and our own flailing economy; about the failure to destroy Al Qaeda and about revenge.
Being able to scream at the top of my lungs in front of people is very therapeutic. It is a great gift for me to be able to do that.
I do still get shocked every once in a while when I catch my reflection when I'm walking past a glass building, but it's in my mind about getting older and finding out what I'm going to look like as it unfolds - or as it folds, depending on where the marks and scars land.
I find a therapy in playing music, in many different ways.
So often we talk about saving the planet, but what we really mean is to save the planet the way it is, so we can live here. So that is can sustain us. Because the planet doesn't need to be saved. It doesn't care if all the squirrels, elephants, and trees die and there's just a couple of amoebas floating around at the poles.
I hope that just what I sing about and how I relate to my audience is as much of a political statement as I need to make.
I'm a bit of a caveman - I don't go out into the digital space very often. I lie facedown on the grass and count how many bugs I can find.
We've never played at this place before. This place is big, and I'm kinda nervous, so we're going to make it feel small by pretending we're in a... bedroom. We'll hang off the edge of the bed, take off our shoes and get naked!
Being a white South African, I enjoyed the better things that that country gave to a small percentage of its population.
So often we talk about saving the planet, but what we really mean is to save the planet the way it is, so we can live here. So that is can sustain us.
When I look at how fortunate I've been, being a musician... my response to being overpaid is that I should pay it back to my community in some way.
When I write the set, I try to create something that will not only be interesting for the audience, but will have a flow for the band, too, so we don't get boring.
It is criminal to put our servicemen and women in harm's way and to put the lives of so many civilians on the line for the misguided frustrations of the Bush administration.
I go back to South Africa at least once a year, sometimes twice, and usually for a month. And probably, I'm guessing, I'll spend more time back there as I get older.
It's a melting pot, southern Africa. You find these cultural collisions that result in art and music, and it's pretty amazing.
I think we should all talk to our enemies and talk to our friends. Talk! That's the only way we'll find solutions.
