[on recording the duet, "Who You Love", with Katy Perry] I had this little chorus for years. And it was 'You love who you love' and I thought that was always going to be a great thing someday to have a song that people could hear and feel that sort of permission. And then it came out again and sometimes you just have to play stuff for other people... And I played it for Don Was, the producer of the record, and he went, 'That's something' and I said, 'I don't know' and then he said, 'Why don't you get Katy to do it?' And my first thought was, 'You can't do that' and then the more I thought about just the music part of it, it made perfect sense. Even if I didn't know Katy, it would have made perfect sense... For me, it always had to be about the song. It's a pretty big moving target to be a couple and have a song but I think there's an authenticity to it when you hear it.

[observation, 2013] I'd like to get to that point where people go, 'You've got a really good sound'. There are certain songs from the past that don't fit in that sound right now, and I'm working overtime to write more songs that do.

I'm half Jewish. People say, 'Well, which side of your family is Jewish?' I say, 'My dad's.' And they always say it doesn't count. But I will say I keep my pool at 92 degrees, so you do the math. I find myself relating to Judaism. One of my best friends is Jewish beyond all Jews-I went to my first Passover seder at his house- and I train in Krav Maga with a lot of Israelis.

If I look a little heavier these days it's because I'm bulking up for a role. I'm playing a musician on tour who eats everything in sight while hardly exercising.

[As he ties his shoe onstage] "It's very difficult to tie one shoe with the same tension as the other one, because if one should be a little tighter than the other, the show's gonna suck. I'm a man of symmetry."

I'm not really good at keeping my own secrets. I can keep other people's secrets pretty well. Unless they're really good and people deserve to hear them. And I'll disseminate the information accordingly.

I don't mind making sissy rock... I'll rock your ass sensitive-style

I love you all so much. We really need to come up with a new name for 'fans'. How about really good friends who can't come over my house.

I get recognized somewhere in between like local meteorologist and national meteorologist

Love is a hot shower where your skin never prunes.

High school is like a spork: its a crappy spoon AND a crappy fork, so in the end, its just plain useless.

About the xBox game 'Halo': "I'm good. I'm fierce. And I'm not some gaming overachiever. I just have a skill. I was born to kill bionically augmented men."

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've realized you can use a fork as a spoon if you use it rapidly enough.

I've always said I've got the coolest fans, and I brag about you like grandchildren when I talk to other artists

So we've got one more song to play for you tonight...[crowd grumbles]...what, you know there's an encore too. The encore is sort of like the condom in the pocket: everybody knows it's there but nobody talks about it.

[crowd cheers] "That was a good response and I'm not going to ask you to do it again. There's nothing I hate more than going to a concert and the guy says 'You having a good time?' and you scream your head off and then the guy says 'I can't hear you!' and I'm like 'The fuck you can't!' I absolutely hate it when guys do that. So I promise you I'll never make you do that. If you scream respectably the first time anyway."

I am beginning to know what it feels like to be a woman. To have people looking at you all the time. And I'm sorry ladies, I had no idea! But people are looking at me all the time. It's like I have musical boobies!

I love coconut, because when you think you're done eating coconut, 25 minutes later, a little piece of coconut comes out of the back of your mouth, and then you say, "Hey! It's more coconut!" I think any food with that kind of determination needs a little respect.

Connecticut's where I built the parts, Boston's where I assembled them, and Atlanta is where I sold them to people.

It's almost charity work, what people have done, turning other people on to my music.