Buckley: "The most audacious thing I could possibly state in this day and age is that life is worth living. It's worth being bashed against. It's worth getting scarred by. It's worth pouring yourself over every one of its coals."

Buckley: "Certain emotions just take you to the notes - being furious, heroic, sad, erotic, when rain comes."

Buckley: "Critics try to pin so many different inaccuracies on me and my music; they look at the complicated things and try to simplify them. They think they can nail your whole life down just by knowing the bare bones of your history in partaking in 10 minutes of conversation."

Buckley: "I just let the emotion dictate what the arrangement is."

Buckley: "Grace is what matters in anything - especially life, especially growth, tragedy, pain, love, death. That's a quality that I admire very greatly. It keeps you from reaching out for the gun too quickly. It keeps you from destroying things too foolishly. It sort of keeps you alive."

Buckley: "A tune has to resonate with whatever is happening around it."

Buckley: "There are times when what you do will be mysterious to everyone... times when you have to change directions before people are ready. Just because someone does something that critics don't like or understand doesn't mean you're failing as a musician. It probably means you're growing."

Buckley: "I resent the fact that a parental warning sticker has to be included on an album as cover art. To me that's censorship."

Buckley: "Critics... They're like traffic cops. They say what they have to say, then leave, and another guy moves in, and he has his say - and it's often just the opposite. The result is either critical acclaim or critical murder, and neither has any bearing on my music or direction."

Buckley: "All these people that want to make me out as part of Generation X had better watch out, or they're going to get X'd out themselves."

Buckley: "Words are beautiful but restricted. They're very masculine, with a compact frame. But voice is over the dark, the place where there's nothing to hang on: it comes from a part of yourself that simply knows, expresses itself, and is."

Buckley: "I'm always writing and reflecting on life. I want to suck it all in."

Buckley: "I've always felt that the quality of the voice is where the real content of a song lies. Words only suggest an experience, but the voice is that experience."

Buckley: "I'm convinced I got signed because of who I am. And it makes me sad."

Buckley: "I don't see people. I don't see men and women at all. When I see them, I see... their mothers and fathers. I see how old they are inside. Like when I look at the president, or anybody in a record company, or a store owner, I may see a little boy behind the counter with the face of an old man. And that's who I talk to."

Buckley: "I just think too much sometimes."

Buckley: "Maybe someday, I'll just make, like, a complete on-demand record that everybody wants to hear. But that would be impossible and, also, I just changed my mind. I don't think I'll ever do that."

Buckley: "I sacrificed my anonymity for my father, whereas he sacrificed me for his fame."

Buckley: "I don't want my reputation to take me over, I just want to be judged on my songs. I want people to come and see me because they want to, not because fashion dictates it."

Buckley: "I disoriented myself from everything about being a human being and just played and played and played and sang and sang and sang."

Buckley: "In my early shows, I wanted to put myself through a new childhood, disintegrating my whole identity to let the real one emerge. I became a human jukebox, learning all these songs I'd always known, discovering the basics of what I do. The cathartic part was in the essential act of singing."

Buckley: "I don't see myself in an ivory tower."