Jeff Buckley

“Music was like my first real toy. I was an only child for a while, and I was alone a lot of the time - and I liked it. I still like being alone.”

“Kiss me out of desire, but not consolation.”

“I just think too much sometimes.”

“I'm far from being a consummate artist. I mean, this is just my first album, and the work is very new. I'm just beginning, and I'm certainly not worthy of demigod status. There's absolutely no danger of me reaching that.”

“The people who raised me musically are my mother, who is a classically trained pianist, and my stepfather.”

“Grace is a quality in people that I just enjoy. It's a very human quality.”

“To young to hold on and to old to just break free and run.”

“More than any other place, New York is where I felt I belonged. I prefer the Lower East Side to any place on the planet. I can be who I am there, and I couldn't do that anywhere I lived as a child. I never fit in when I lived in California, even though that's where my roots are.”

“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.”

“She's a tear that hangs inside my soul forever.”

“The music comes from within and outside. Within is the big mystery of life; we've all got it.”

“I'm convinced part of the reason I got signed is because of who I am, and it makes me sad.”

“You can't be, like, smashing guitars against Marshall stacks all the time. As a matter of fact, after a while, it just looks like posing - it never really gets down to any message or any real expression.”

“Certain emotions just take you to the notes - being furious, heroic, sad, erotic, when rain comes.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I don't choose the songs; the songs choose me.”

“I have a lot of my mother in me, but I was just born with the same parts as my father. I don't sound like him. I mean, I can do an impression of him right now, and I do not sound like him. I sound like me. My sense of rhythm I learned from my mother. My melodies, I think sometimes, I get from my mother.”

“Sensitivity isn't being wimpy. It's about being so painfully aware that a flea landing on a dog is like a sonic boom. I enjoy a lot of mystery.”

“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.”