Sometimes I wish that I was the weather, you'd bring me up in conversation forever. And when it rained, I'd be the talk of the day.
John Mayer
Life is like a box of crayons. Most people are the 8-color boxes, but what you're really looking for are the 64-color boxes with the sharpeners on the back. I fancy myself to be a 64-color box, though I've got a few missing.
I've never done anything because I thought it would look cool.
A man's got two shots for jewelry: a wedding ring and a watch. The watch is a lot easier to get on and off than a wedding ring.
Everybody is just a stranger, but that's the danger in going my own way.
Sometimes it feels like my life is just one long day.
They say stay in the lines, but there's always something better on the other side.
Ladies, if you want to know the way to my heart... good spelling and good grammar, good punctuation, capitalize only where you are supposed to capitalize, it's done.
I like giving people something they don't want to miss the next time. It's a show with little twists and turns and curves. It has me being silly and stupid and compassionate and completely deep.
Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix.
I'd like to think the best of me was still hiding up in my sleeve.
You make a choice in your life, and it affects your life in all the ways, good and bad.
You get to a certain age where you prepare yourself for happiness. Sometimes you never remember to actually get happy.
I can't even explain to you how terrible that feels, that I equate dating a woman with punishment, shame, guilt, disappointment, reproach, reprimand, persecution. It's a nightmare.
I hate being the heartbreaker. Hate it. If I date somebody and it doesn't work out, it's another nightmare for me.
Sometimes I get so bold and I'm so confident about what I'm doing that I actually try to be more of a dork because it's a really liberating feeling to experience what it's like to not care.
I've never been a bad boy.
I hope that what it comes down to at the end of the day is that people believe that I believe what I'm singing. It comes down to being believable. You don't have to be likeable; generally, though, I think I am.
I've realized you can use a fork as a spoon if you use it rapidly enough.
High School is like a spork: it's a crappy spoon and a crappy fork, so in the end it's just plain useless.
I wanted to be a blues guitar player. And a singer. And a songwriter. Not a shock jock.
I have these accidents, these mistakes, these self-inflicted wounds, and then I tear my head to shreds about it for days.
No matter what I do, I'm going to earn it.
What I've learned in my life, it's a very interesting social study for me, to go back and forth between being the guy at home and being the guy on the road and being the guy in studio and being the guy in the interview. The environment around you has so much to do with your character, and when I'm home, my character really changes quite a bit.
I'm trying everything I can not to be jaded 'cause I don't like jaded musicians.
Have you ever loved somebody, loved her completely, but had to end the relationship for life reasons?
I've figured out my learning curve. I can look at something and somehow know exactly how long it will take for me to learn it.
I feel my shows are like a late-night talk show that we settle down and do every night.
In the quest to be clever, I completely forgot about the people that I love and that love me.
I believe in blues, and I believe that it's been misrepresented.
When you're just open but not honest, then you start free-associating garbage.
There's a constantly applicable nature to soul music, whereas sometimes pop music can be a periodical.
I'm singing what I want to sing based on the emotion of what that day feels like. That's what comes out of my mouth and guitar. That impacts people. They know anything can happen.
Maybe someday you can accuse somebody of being a poseur by selling out and playing blues music, but that's just not going to happen in my lifetime.
The night I was recognized for 'Daughters' at the Grammys was the night this record started. I knew I had bought the time to learn everything I needed before I started this one. 'Continuum' is not a shot in the dark, it's not a guesstimation.
It's so interesting how success hits people and how they react to it.
I just sort of lost my head for a little while.
I lost my head for a little while.
I have the obsessiveness of someone who's a sober, recovering addict displacing his addiction. Except I never had the addiction.
Atlanta's my musical home. It really was the place where I really came alive.
I get recognized somewhere in between like local meteorologist and national meteorologist.
It's almost charity work, what people have done, turning other people on to my music.
I love being the center of attention.
People want to see musicians sing things that come from their own mind and own heart in real time, responding to the moment for them.
I've never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, 'We're full.'
I look away at car crashes, and I know people who look away at car crashes, because it makes us uncomfortable to watch other people in pain.
I don't write songs in order to stick it to my exes. I don't release underground dis tracks.
I'm getting to a point where everything is becoming streamlined in my life. I'm learning how to stand onstage for two hours and play in front of thousands of people as if I am completely in the moment every moment.
I need some kind of emotional stake in it to write my lyrics, assuming that place. It might just be an emotion I understand but am not currently experiencing necessarily.
Trying to impress my mother with words was one of my favourite pursuits.
