Life can be either of two things: What it makes of you or what you make of it.

I've said very openly that the first aspect of my artistry to arrive was writing. It took me a good number of years to find my voice.

With 'Fate's Right Hand,' I think I reached a level of completeness in forming and articulating ideas at around the same time I reached a place where I could match it with my singing voice. It was a kind of coming together.

As a songwriter, metaphor is instinctual.

I'm enough of a southeast Texas boy - there's enough white trash in my blood that when somebody gives me money to make a record, I feel like I have to please them instead of myself.

I have a history, and I am proud of my legacy as a songwriter, all of the songs that I've brought forth into our culture. I'm proud of that.

Adolescence in our culture for a young woman, for a girl, is a hard road.

I don't make music for the radio. And when I was being played on the radio a lot, I didn't.

I've had a nice career. I'm no David Bowie or Bruce Springsteen out there. I'm not an icon. I'm just a working artist.

Sustaining a narrative in sentences and paragraphs is very different from songwriting. But the dedication to the craft and just the endurance that it takes, you know, to stick with it and believe you can pull it out and make it real and finish it, I learned that a long time ago writing songs.

As I started to study old blues recordings and really pay attention to my favorites, it really started to come to me that all of my favorite pieces of music weren't produced, they were performed. The producer is nearly invisible: no thumbprint other than the composition and the performers.

I'm a vulnerable guy.

I wrote a song a good long while ago, 'I Ain't Livin' Long Like This,' that has been around and been recorded by a lot of people, but it was basically childhood memory.

I'm a pretty successful songwriter and known in some circles, but I didn't think the story of my career was of any real entertainment value.

The beautiful despair is never fruitless. It keeps you going. Like when I first heard Bob Dylan do 'Things Have Changed,' or any time I see any work of art really beautifully done, like Michelangelo's 'The David' or that movie 'Lost in Translation' - it inspires me to try and find my own version of that.

Over the years, I've come to realize that writing 'I Ain't Living Long Like This' was an exercise in combined musical influence, mostly that of Hank Williams, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan - artists no one has ever heard of.

Invariably, collaboration leads to new forms of self-expression and to the things that move you.

I concern myself with timelessness all the time. If you're not swinging for museum quality, your mind is not in the right place. It doesn't mean you get there, but at least it's the intent.

I will say this: I've always sort of had maybe an inflated sense of my ability to sequence songs in a narrative flow.

As a poet, Will Rogers just had this natural conversational style.

At the end of the day, Johnny Cash was a poet.

The old handbook on writing is 'Write what you know.' I come from an autobiographical starting place almost all of the time, but it would be a mistake to presume that I'm not using fiction to extend the narrative.

As an artist, one of the ingredients to doing good work is self-awareness, and that's something I cultivate.

I can stitch a song together in about an hour anytime you want, but it won't have the depth.

It varies from song to song, but melody was always easy for me.

As a creative individual, I really go out of my way to avoid the corporate scene in terms of songwriting. If the first question is how much money is it going to make, I'm going to be in trouble anyway.

Whether they are actual poets or their music exemplifies a poetic sensibility, generally speaking, the Americana artist shuns commercial compromise in favor of a singular vision. Which resonates with me.

That young man that I was in 1988 - I was insecure. Besides making good music, I wanted to be cool; I wanted to be accepted and stuff.

People ask me, 'What is the mystique of the Texas songwriter?' Well, we ran barefoot from March until November. I think there's something about being a barefoot kid that gets you closer to the place - you take root.

The '90s weren't my finest years artistically. I wrote some good songs in there, but in terms of my vision of getting the paint on the canvas, that was not my best time. I didn't like the fact that I had fallen into mediocrity.

When I was doing something on someone else's dime, I was inclined to try to anticipate what they wanted. I knew that wasn't what an artist was supposed to do. In funding my own music, I found my voice.

As a young man, I craved fame. I was trying to fix holes in my soul that were there from childhood.

I'm under-appreciated, of course.

To be earning a living as an artist at any time, any place is kinda the ultimate gift that you can receive from the universe, and I'm very much aware of that. I get to do exactly what I want to do.

I'm very grateful that I was given the ability to create.

I think, back in the '80s when I was having hits all the time, I took it for granted.

I've always said that Guy Clark is a regional songwriter without being regional. He's global. His craft is like, well, Larry McMurtry would be an example. I kind of see Guy Clark and Larry McMurtry in the same wave.

I knew Townes Van Zandt a little bit.

Collaboration is a vital part of my creative life. I've had success with Guy Clark and Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash.

Singing duets is instinctive, intuitive.

Memory is revisionist, you know. 'The Houston Kid' was based on true things that happened. But I know - from writing a memoir that I've been working on for awhile - that reconstructing memory is revisionism.

I grew up poor in East Houston. I used to be ashamed of it, but I'm not anymore. It's kind of a badge of courage now.

Collaboration allows me to challenge myself to find a new passion for music.

My preference for female company is based for the most part on the fact that women are more self-aware than men, in my experience.

My parents were sharecrop farm kids with no education - seventh, eighth grade.

Certainly, writing a book was challenging. It took me a long time to learn how to do it. It took me seven years to get a sense of how to wean myself off the process and trickery of songwriting. You realize that giant metaphors work in songs because you have so few words. Standing alone on a page, they threaten to be overblown in a hurry.

I cannot say I'm a poet. That's for someone when they take in consideration where they can bestow 'poet' on. I can't do it. But I would be disingenuous if I didn't say that my intention is poetry.

I was an only child.

So much of inspiration comes from collaboration with other musicians.

For me, my career has never been about what I've done. But it's been about becoming, achieving, and pushing myself further.