Guitarists From The United States

"Belief is a beautiful armor But makes for the heaviest sword. Like punching underwater, You never can hit who you're trying for. Some need the exhibition And some have to know they tried, It's the chemical weapon for the war that's ragin' on inside."

"Now if we had the power To bring our neighbors home from war, They would have never missed a Christmas, No more ribbons on their door. And when you trust your television, What you get is what you got. Because when they own the information, oh They can bend it all they want."

"Me and all my friends We're all misunderstood. They say we stand for nothing and There's no way we ever could. Now we see everything that's going wrong With the world and those who lead it. We just feel like we don't have the means To rise above and beat it.So we keep waiting, Waiting on the world to change. We keep on waiting, Waiting on the world to change. It's hard to beat the system When we're standing at a distance. So we keep waiting, Waiting on the world to change."

"I know a girl; She puts the color inside of my world. But she's just like a maze Where all of the walls all continually change. And I've done all I can To stand on her steps with my heart in my hands. Now I'm starting to see Maybe it's got nothing to do with me.Fathers, be good to your daughters, Daughters will love like you do. Girls become lovers who turn into mothers, So mothers, be good to your daughters too."

"Yes, I'm grounded, got my wings clipped, I'm surrounded by all this pavement. Guess I'll circle while I'm waiting For my fuse to dry.Someday I'll fly, someday I'll soar, Someday I'll be so damn much more. Cause I'm bigger than my body gives me credit for."

"Something about the way your hair falls in your face I love the shape you take when crawling towards the pillowcase You tell me where to go and Though I might leave to find it, I'll never let your head hit the bed Without my hand behind it.And if you want love, We'll make it. Swim in a deep sea Of blankets. Take all your big plans And break them, This is bound to be a while."

"I am driving up '85 in the Kind of morning that lasts all afternoon, Just stuck inside the gloom. 4 more exits to my apartment but I am tempted to keep the car in drive And leave it all behind.Because I wonder sometimes About the outcome Of a still verdictless life."

"I want to run through the halls of my high school, I want to scream at the Top of my lungs. I just found out there's no such thing as the real world, Just a lie you've got to rise above."

""Welcome to the real world", she said to me Condescendingly. Take a seat, Take your life Plot it out in black and white. Well I never lived the dreams of the prom kings And the drama queens. I'd like to think the best of me Is still hiding Up my sleeve.They love to tell you: Stay inside the lines, But something's better On the other side."

"Absolutely, because during sex, I’m just going to run a filmstrip. I’m still masturbating."

"Sexually it was crazy. That’s all I’ll say. It was like napalm, sexual napalm."

"I don’t think I open myself to it. My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock. I’m going to start dating separately from my dick."

"Someone asked me the other day, “What does it feel like now to have a hood pass?” And by the way, it’s sort of a contradiction in terms, because if you really had a hood pass, you could call it a nigger pass. Why are you pulling a punch and calling it a hood pass if you really have a hood pass? But I said, “I can’t really have a hood pass. I’ve never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, ‘We’re full.’”"

"I was smart enough to know it would probably make me a salable item for the paparazzi. I knew I’d have to move to a home that had a gate. But that pearl of possibility that lives in your heart when you meet somebody you want to know more about has such a different molecular density than everything else that you have to pursue it."

"It wasn’t as direct as me saying “I now make the choice to bring the paparazzi into my life.” I really said, “I now make the choice to sleep with Jessica Simpson.” That was stronger than my desire to stay out of the paparazzi’s eye."

"The first thing I said was a question: Does this really come from the family? I think that was essential to me sort of processing the honor. And when I found out that, in fact, it had, it took me about 48 hours to sort of strike the balance in how I was going to approach being -- you know, being invited to this unbelievable event without actually having the proximity to Michael Jackson personally. I'd never met him."

"Sometimes it feels like my life is just one long day."

"I know if it was the Time 99, I would've been off the list."

"I find myself in situations that I know would be unbelievable pictures and I have to gauge, Is this worth taking the camera out? Am I gonna lose the moment? Am I gonna get a dirty look from Sting?"

"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 become very domesticated, it becomes riding my bike, and the music thing — the music thing doesn't leave but it's kind of less put upon me by other people as a musician."

"I never worked with T.I. Here's the back story to that Wikipedia nugget: I was a guest on TRL and happened to get my hands on the list of goofy, un Andrew-Miller-like questions I was going to be asked before I walked on set. One of the questions was "Who do you like more, T.I. or [I forgot the other southern rap artist]?" So I snuck to the bathroom and searched "T.I." on my Blackberry. I memorized as much information as I could and then announced that we were working together."

"It was so frightening at the time to be seventeen and have heart monitors hooked up to you. That was the moment the songwriter in me was born. I discovered a whole other side of me. I came home that night and started writing lyrics. I discovered it all at once: It was like opening up a lockbox, and inside was a depth that I didn't even know I had as a person, or a writer — incredible creativity and vision and neurosis, complete neurosis. They all go together in a package."

"I went to my library, right? And I started to research the Bill of Rights and I did not technically find anything that said all Americans shall eat shrimp with whoever they like, but I found some things that are close enough to infer that I am within my legal rights to enjoy seafood with whomever I choose."

"Sheryl's heroes are in black and white photos, and so are mine."

"If you told me I was going to live to 240, I would take 10 years off and try and act. I don't have that kind of time, so I'd much rather stick to playing guitar."

"I won't ever get on stage at a comedy club when people know about it."

"The saddest kind of sad is the sad that tries not to be sad. You know, when Sad tries to bite its lip and not cry and smile and go, "No, I'm happy for you?" That's when it's really sad."

"I am not in Us Weekly. I'd have to be going out with someone who is in there to be in there myself."

"If I had done things differently, I'd probably have the paparazzi waiting around for me. At the studio where I've been recording, Jessica Simpson is working there, too. The paparazzi are outside waiting for her to come out. That's the result of her decisions. My decisions have led me to the point that when I walk out in front of the paparazzi, I'm considered a waste of film."

"There's a real self-serving element to hip-hop that threatens its life span."

"I love the Grammy nominations this year. Anybody who really loves what they do got rewarded for it. It's not a death match between Ray Charles and Jessica Simpson."

"Songs can be Trojan horses, taking charged ideas and sneaking past the ego's defenses and into the open mind."

"Everybody enjoys arguing about the current state of music because it feels as if you are talking about something incredibly important, yet it requires little understanding of the subject matter at hand. It's like world politics meets the pink questions in Trivial Pursuit. Points are made but nothing gets accomplished."

"Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix."

"If it's some style, especially some shrink-wrapped thing hanging on a wall at Toys 'R' Us, then it won't live, it won't be dynamic … It becomes exactly what the marketing people want — a genre, something to make their job easier. But if it's something like, "Everybody's telling me the wall's over there, but I'm going to push against it and see if it's really there" — to me, that's what punk is. An idealistic attitude."

"What's obvious to me isn't always obvious to other people."

"The 'minute' meant more like minute … Like we were small compared to a big arena rock band. And the other reason for the name — I had a bunch of names on a paper, and D. Boon picked that one. He liked it because there was some right-wing group who used the name. We thought, we'll call ourselves the same thing — there goes their power! It'll dilute it and confuse things."

"Navy housing is like tract homes. … All the houses look the same. Everybody's pop was the same rank. There's a lot of negative to the military — like, most of it. But one good thing was I lived with all kinds of people, as far as ethnic background or whatever. Because the navy was integrated. That was kind of neat. And with everybody's pop being chiefs, you could see that no one was above or below anyone else. You know how neighborhoods get all caught up in different things? Well, in the military you're not like that. You're all together. So I will say that was one positive thing that came out of it."

"hurts I have are my fault but I'm sure gonna learn from it and hopefully anyone reading this will too. the lesson: stay aware on a bicycle and look up the road in front of you at all times to make sure you can deal w/what's coming and the condition of the road you're gonna be rolling down!"

"No musician is indifferent to the public's perception of him, but the exuberant, logorrheic Mayer takes self-awareness to new postmodern heights. Like a football player providing color commentary on his own career, he muses constantly on his own abilities and his place in the taxonomy of pop."

"Before that it was Halo, and no one could beat him. That's pretty much his MO if he finds an interest in something -- it doesn't matter how incidental it is."

"You can't start a fire, sitting 'round crying over a broken heart. This gun's for hire, Even if we're just dancing in the dark. You can't start a fire, worrying about your little world falling apart. This gun's for hire, Even if we're just dancing in the dark."

"Now I think I'm going down to the well tonight And I'm going to drink till I get my fill. And I hope when I get old I don't sit around thinking about it, But I probably will. Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture A little of the glory of, Well time slips away and leaves you with nothing mister but boring stories of glory days."

"I pull you close but when we kiss I can feel a doubt. I remember back when we started, My kisses used to turn you inside out. I used to drive you to work in the morning; Friday night I'd drive you all around. You used to love to drive me wild, But lately girl you get your kicks from just driving me down."

"Now you hung with me when all the others turned away turned up their nose. We liked the same music, we liked the same bands, we liked the same clothes. We told each other that we were the wildest, the wildest things we'd ever seen. Now I wished you would have told me, I wished I could have talked to you. Just to say goodbye Bobby Jean."

"We busted out of class had to get away from those fools; We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school. Tonight I hear the neighborhood drummer sound; I can feel my heart begin to pound. You say you're tired and you just want to close your eyes and follow your dreams down."

"Sometimes it's like someone took a knife baby, edgy and dull And cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my soul.At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet And a freight train running through the middle of my head. Only you can cool my desire. I'm on fire."

"The times are tough now, just getting tougher. This old world is rough, it's just getting rougher. Cover me, come on baby, cover me. Well I'm looking for a lover who will come on in and cover me."

"Born down in a dead man's town, The first kick I took was when I hit the ground. You end up like a dog that's been beat too much, Till you spend half your life just covering up."

"I catch him when he's strayin' like any brother would. Man turns his back on his family well he just ain't no good."