Quotes By Dave Matthews

We have to be active about kindness and about peace. I've always fantasized that it would be great if there was a Department of Peace.

When I listen to my favorite songwriters, they have such simple melodies and chords. I occasionally manage to stop at the right time, but all too often I keep on going until I have way too many notes and words. But that's just what I do.

I think we should all talk to our enemies and talk to our friends. Talk! That's the only way we'll find solutions.

I'm a very vicious critic of myself.

I'm familiar with that feeling of silence that comes with a very imminent catastrophe, when you know you have absolutely no control over a situation.

Good music is good music, and everything else can go to hell.

There's a freedom to being young that is harder to come by as time goes on.

I'm a fairly tormented artist, and I'm less willing to indulge myself in self-pity, outside of songwriting.

I'm a bit of a caveman - I don't go out into the digital space very often. I lie facedown on the grass and count how many bugs I can find.

We give the podium to a lot of people who shouldn't have the podium. The message that's delivered the loudest and in the most entertaining way is the one that we're going to put on because that's what we want. We want ratings more than we want to deliver information. That's just where the culture's gotten.

I fear that our true motivation is about oil and our own flailing economy; about the failure to destroy Al Qaeda and about revenge.

Success turns a lot of people off. I have a pretty solid sense of joy and respect that irritates people, and can irritate me, too.

I don't think socialism, and I don't think warmness and respect are necessarily bad words.

You wear nothing but you wear it so well.

We've never played at this place before. This place is big, and I'm kinda nervous, so we're going to make it feel small by pretending we're in a... bedroom. We'll hang off the edge of the bed, take off our shoes and get naked!

I'll lean on you and you lean on me and we'll be okay.

Well, I've been in a few car wrecks.

The world and the universe are far more wonderful if there's not a puppet master.

I hope that just what I sing about and how I relate to my audience is as much of a political statement as I need to make.

It is criminal to put our servicemen and women in harm's way and to put the lives of so many civilians on the line for the misguided frustrations of the Bush administration.

But then there are magical, beautiful things in the world. There's incredible acts of kindness and bravery, and in the most unlikely places, and it gives you hope.

A guy and a girl can be just friends, but at one point or another, they will fall for each other... maybe temporarily, maybe at the wrong time, maybe too late, or maybe forever.

Being a white South African, I enjoyed the better things that that country gave to a small percentage of its population.

If I find something I like, I'll chase it and see what comes out the other side. Once a song gets momentum and gets away from you, that's a good sign.

It's a melting pot, southern Africa. You find these cultural collisions that result in art and music, and it's pretty amazing.

I'm partly obsessed by aging gracefully.

Take what you can from your dreams, make them as real as anything.

I can't believe that we would lie in our graves wondering if we had spent our living days well. I can't believe that we would lie in our graves dreaming of things that we might have been.

So often we talk about saving the planet, but what we really mean is to save the planet the way it is, so we can live here. So that is can sustain us.

I use God in my songs a lot but I don't have a relationship. I don't know what that means.