I wanted everybody to like me. I thought I was one shuck and jive away in every direction.
— John Mayer
I'm very happy in all aspects of my life.
I just sort of lost my head for a little while.
Life is like a box of crayons. Most people are the 8-color boxes, but what you're really looking for are the 64-color boxes with the sharpeners on the back. I fancy myself to be a 64-color box, though I've got a few missing.
Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix.
I've realized you can use a fork as a spoon if you use it rapidly enough.
They say stay in the lines, but there's always something better on the other side.
People are really concerned with what other people are saying about them.
I love being the center of attention.
I have these accidents, these mistakes, these self-inflicted wounds, and then I tear my head to shreds about it for days.
Maybe someday you can accuse somebody of being a poseur by selling out and playing blues music, but that's just not going to happen in my lifetime.
All I want a song to do is just to kind of present an idea.
I look away at car crashes, and I know people who look away at car crashes, because it makes us uncomfortable to watch other people in pain.
I quit the media game. I'm out. I'm done.
Have you ever loved somebody, loved her completely, but had to end the relationship for life reasons?
I don't write songs in order to stick it to my exes. I don't release underground dis tracks.
I'm a good music provider, and I'm fine with that. I'm a quality music manufacturer.
It's very liberating when you finally realize it's impossible to make everyone like you.
I hate being the heartbreaker. Hate it. If I date somebody and it doesn't work out, it's another nightmare for me.
I can't even explain to you how terrible that feels, that I equate dating a woman with punishment, shame, guilt, disappointment, reproach, reprimand, persecution. It's a nightmare.
Sometimes it feels like my life is just one long day.
I get recognized somewhere in between like local meteorologist and national meteorologist.
It's almost charity work, what people have done, turning other people on to my music.
My fear is that I go up to the girl of my dreams and say 'I'm sorry, but I've got to say hello to you,' and she slides the stool back and gets up and walks away, saying, 'Not for me, Bub. I don't want anything to do with you.'
I've learned to appreciate everything that has been given to me.
I scientifically engineer my music to be as accessible as possible.
I believe in blues, and I believe that it's been misrepresented.
There's a constantly applicable nature to soul music, whereas sometimes pop music can be a periodical.
Look, demanding somebody do anything in this day and age is not going to fly.
It's so interesting how success hits people and how they react to it.
In the quest to be clever, I completely forgot about the people that I love and that love me.
I may have taken someone through the wringer psychologically, but I've never been sinister.
I've never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, 'We're full.'
I'm not an icon. Not even in America.
I'm not deluded enough to think that everyone who knows my name is a listener. You know, I hope that part of that interest - part of that public interest - has to do with me still making records that people like.
I wanted to be a blues guitar player. And a singer. And a songwriter. Not a shock jock.
Sometimes I get so bold and I'm so confident about what I'm doing that I actually try to be more of a dork because it's a really liberating feeling to experience what it's like to not care.
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.
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.
The night I was recognized for 'Daughters' at the Grammys was the night this record started. I knew I had bought the time to learn everything I needed before I started this one. 'Continuum' is not a shot in the dark, it's not a guesstimation.
You make a choice in your life, and it affects your life in all the ways, good and bad.
When you're just open but not honest, then you start free-associating garbage.
I don't want to detach. I don't want to go live in a gated community.
I'm the only person I know who's got a bunch of money.
I was very successful from a very early age, and I want to keep it.
I'm willing to make compromises based on someone I think is the one, but I think it's psychologically important to people when they're famous to be the only famous person they know.
My hits are not hits.
There are people in the world who have the power to change our values.
I've never been a bad boy.
Trying to impress my mother with words was one of my favourite pursuits.
