John Mayer's Quotes

I'm a good music provider, and I'm fine with that. I'm a quality music manufacturer.

I'm not an icon. Not even in America.

I'm the only person I know who's got a bunch of money.

I'm trying everything I can not to be jaded 'cause I don't like jaded musicians.

I've figured out my learning curve. I can look at something and somehow know exactly how long it will take for me to learn it.

I've never been a bad boy.

I've never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, 'We're full.'

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

In the quest to be clever, I completely forgot about the people that I love and that love me.

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

Look, demanding somebody do anything in this day and age is not going to fly.

My hits are not hits.

No matter what I do, I'm going to earn it.

Nothing feels worse than having to break the stage down before the performance, and I mean nothing.

People are really concerned with what other people are saying about them.

There are people in the world who have the power to change our values.

There's a certain lack of gimmickry to what I do that makes people in England go: 'Where's the thing?'

There's so many inspiring people out there.

When you're just open but not honest, then you start free-associating garbage.

I'm singing what I want to sing based on the emotion of what that day feels like. That's what comes out of my mouth and guitar. That impacts people. They know anything can happen.

I like giving people something they don't want to miss the next time. It's a show with little twists and turns and curves. It has me being silly and stupid and compassionate and completely deep.

I need some kind of emotional stake in it to write my lyrics, assuming that place. It might just be an emotion I understand but am not currently experiencing necessarily.

I hope that what it comes down to at the end of the day is that people believe that I believe what I'm singing. It comes down to being believable. You don't have to be likeable; generally, though, I think I am.

I'm getting to a point where everything is becoming streamlined in my life. I'm learning how to stand onstage for two hours and play in front of thousands of people as if I am completely in the moment every moment.

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.

If you get half a million, at a certain stage you probably will get 4 million people, if they are able to hear it. The touring thing is unbelievable. It really is amazing from what we did the last tour even to what we are doing now.

If you told me I was going to live to 240, I would take 10 years off and try and act. I don't have that kind of time, so I'd much rather stick to playing guitar.

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.

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.

When you do an interview with me, you're talking to a cheap imitation of the person that I really am. There's no magic in my words, it's just me talking.

Numb is the new deep, done with the old me, and talk is the same cheap it's been.

People want to see musicians sing things that come from their own mind and own heart in real time, responding to the moment for them.

You make a choice in your life, and it affects your life in all the ways, good and bad.

Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix.

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.

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.

High School is like a spork: it's a crappy spoon and a crappy fork, so in the end it's just plain useless.

Have you ever loved somebody, loved her completely, but had to end the relationship for life reasons?

I have the obsessiveness of someone who's a sober, recovering addict displacing his addiction. Except I never had the addiction.

Sometimes I wish that I was the weather, you'd bring me up in conversation forever. And when it rained, I'd be the talk of the day.

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 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.

You get to a certain age where you prepare yourself for happiness. Sometimes you never remember to actually get happy.

Everybody is just a stranger, but that's the danger in going my own way.

I've never done anything because I thought it would look cool.

I'm not as surprised in going from playing 1,000 seats to 4,000 seats as I was from 100 to 500 seats.

Trying to impress my mother with words was one of my favourite pursuits.

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.

Sometimes it feels like my life is just one long day.

I knew what I wanted to do when I was 13 and I had to go through four years of high school to get out. That's a blessing, because I never had to lay on my bed staring up at the ceiling going, 'What am I going to do with my life?'

I feel strikingly domestic. We're in our own world with two busses and trucks.

I've learned to appreciate everything that has been given to me.

It's so interesting how success hits people and how they react to it.

There's a constantly applicable nature to soul music, whereas sometimes pop music can be a periodical.