“I can't actually play any instrument properly. I can't read music. And here's the New York Times calling me the new George Gershwin. It was so ridiculous, really embarrassing. It was embarrassing to watch these people fall into the trap of their own critical conceits.”

“I am so surprised by New York City. I thought New York must be ugly and unpleasant, you know, I saw all those movies about New York….But New York is beautiful and the people here are really nice.”

“I can embarrass myself very easily on guitar. It's funny because people say to me I can play anything; I'm God on the guitar. But I could make a big list of everything I can't play... I'm grateful that people don't notice that.”

“Compilations, to me, are embarrassing. To bring out a compilation, to me, is to say, "Look. I've got no new material so please buy this. I need money to pay the rent." I think it's very embarrassing. And that is very annoying because the record company owns all those titles and they don't ask me for my advice. They just decide to release "the best of" compilations and they put out a lot of very bad quality music. There are a couple of good titles but the rest are just tracks to fill out the album. And they know very well that they can't rely on me promoting them because I won't promote such records.”

“The man that owned the company that I worked for called me into the office and said how can you be on our payroll and have your own New York Times ad! This has to stop! And I said but it can't I have orders to ship. And he said well you're fired. And that's how I started my business.”

“Confidence is the willingness to be as ridiculous, luminous, intelligent, and kind as you really are, without embarrassment.”

“(on his inability to read music) "If someone lays the notes on a page in front of me, it's meaningless…because to me you can't express the rhythms properly like that. It's a very ineffective way of doing it, so I've never really bothered picking it up."”

“That's the embarrassment. The embarrassment is that I'm given credibility in this world, because of the disappointment that the public has in what the news media does. Not because I have an ideological agenda.”

“I'm very embarrassing to look at. You know why? Here's why I'm embarrassing: 'cause there's a little bit of me in everybody… I'm like the boy that never grew up. I'm very, very passionate about what I do. I mean, I love what I do…. and people are like "God, give this guy a valium or something, you know? Can't he have a bad day?"”

“I don’t really have drunk friends. My friends are kind of adult; they have a drink. But they hold their liquor. I think it’s incredibly embarrassing when people are drunk. It just looks so ridiculous. I find it very degrading.”