The concept of God in America is very different than it is in England. Because we see the horrendous outcome of religion as being an American thing, in which the name of God has been hijacked by a gang of psychopaths and bullies and homophobes, and the name of God has been used for their own twisted agendas.

I'm kind of old-school and love nothing more than sitting, opening a book, and reading it. But I also love listening to audio books.

The idea of songwriting is a transformative thing, and what I do with songwriting is take situations that are quite ordinary and transform them in some way. Apart from things like the murder ballads, the songs I write, at their core, are quite ordinary human concerns, but the process of writing about them transforms them into something else.

What I'm resistant to is the 'Walk the Line' biopic, where you have this redemptive life done in two hours. It just doesn't wash with me. I've been there and things don't work out that way.

When you're on your own, you have all the self-censorship that everybody has when they try and write. All the little voices that say, 'No, you can't write that, what will they think of that?'

I lost my innocence with Johnny Cash. I used to watch the 'Johnny Cash Show' on television in Wangaratta when I was about 9 or 10 years old. At that stage I had really no idea about rock n' roll. I watched him, and from that point I saw that music could be an evil thing - a beautiful, evil thing.

I have a very strange relationship in general with women around my music. There's some that understand it and some that think there should be a law against it.

Guns are part of the American psyche, aren't they? This is collateral damage for having a Wild West mentality. It's intrinsic to the American psyche. It's never going to change.

I have an armchair interest in gardening, but I don't like to get my knees dirty. I don't have a garden.

I'm not a misogynist, so you can dispense with that. I think I've done wonders for the feminist movement.

To me, I don't write when I'm depressed. If I'm depressed, which is actually rare, I'm not doing anything, you know, and I'm not able to do anything.

'Inspiration' is a word used by people who aren't really doing anything.

The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song. What do I write about? I never know.

Accessible local libraries are vital to communities and to children.

What you're really after when you see a film or listen to a song is a singular vision, and I'm not sure how much of that you really get in Hollywood.

I'm not someone who's particularly in touch with the way they feel. I've heard it said that you should be a 'human being' not a 'human doing', but I'm a human doing, very much so.

I'm a kind of hard-wired pessimist. I can't help but see the world in a certain kind of way.

There's an element to songwriting that I can't explain, that comes from somewhere else. I can't explain that dividing line between nothing and something that happens within a song, where you have absolutely nothing, and then suddenly you have something. It's like the origin of the universe.

I love performing. I can get to be that person I always wanted to be - godlike.

Look, when I look back, from 20 onwards, I was actually having a pretty good time, I have to say.

I used to believe that if I could do certain things - write a book or be a successful musician - that I'd be transformed into a happy person, but it doesn't work that way.

No, I wouldn't direct a movie, no. I couldn't. I don't have the patience for it, I don't have the people skills. You have to be clever. I'm not really clever in that kind of way. And you have to be able to manipulate people, but at the same time allow them to feel like they are manipulating you, to get the kind of movie that you want.

Most of my ideals and stuff really come from my mother.

The more information you have, the more human our heroes become and consequently the less mysterious and godlike. They need to be godlike.

When I'm singing 'Deanna,' for example, which I sing pretty much every night, it brings forward a kind of imagined, romanticized lie about this particular person, which I find really comforting and exciting to sing about.

It's always a pleasure on a personal note for me to come back to Australia.

I love rock-n-roll. I think it's an exciting art form. It's revolutionary. Still revolutionary and it changed people. It changed their hearts. But yeah, even rock-n-roll has a lot of rubbish, really bad music.

To my undying shame, I do read reviews. I don't read them all, but I like to get some kind of idea how things are going.

My records are basically a litany of complaints against the world, and I'm quite like that in real life as well.

I'm not saying this in a condescending kind of way, but it's quite simple: The making of America was a heroic thing. Australia has a much murkier, much more complex view of its history. It's just full of all these open wounds we don't really know what to do with.

You write a scene, and it works or it doesn't. It's immediate.

I have a particular dislike for children's films. I'm way past the novelty aspect.

If you're Australian, you feel it in your bones because you're at odds with everybody else, except other Australians, in the sense that people always seem to be behaving strangely. People always seem to be behaving the wrong way, in a different way. You say things and there are silences.

If I'm hanging around too much, my wife and kids say, 'Hey, why don't you go downstairs and start a new novel?'

As Australians, we see the law as inherently bad. We have a real inherent distaste for authority in our makeup.

Self-editing is the way I write. Ten verses of a song and it's finished. Then we start playing it and if I see that it's too long, I'll start cutting.

I don't feel I'm thrown around by the winds of taste and fashion.

I've watched 'Oprah Winfrey.' And I'm proud. I don't care what anybody says! I don't know whether I've watched it. I've been in the room while it's been on.

I just want to leave this world with a massive catalog of songs.

Being a parent can make you a horrible person at times, because you're pushed to the limit constantly.

At some point you start seeing the difference between what you really want, and what is your priority order. I feel that today I know what I want. That's the problem with perspective, as well as focus and concentration.

Personally I find the story of Christ incredibly moving.

L.A. is full of screenwriters. I don't know why. On many levels, it's such a thankless occupation.

I love being manipulated by what I see. I love weepies and romantic comedies where you're reaching for the Kleenex at the right moment.

The only person who can say they're happy getting old is someone who isn't actually old yet. Every day, I get less and less happy about that idea.

Songs you can dip in and out of, but a book... well, it can overpower you.

I write a lot, and very often I write a couple of lines that are particularly revealing in some kind of way. And then as a few more lines get added and a piece gets added, eventually the song pretty much takes over and you can't really find a way to change those things.

The more settled I've become, the more problematic my characters have become. There was a period when I wrote sensitive and gentle songs and these came at a time when life was at its most destructive. I think you write about what you need, on some level.

With writing a song, I've always felt, right from the start, like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel. I don't ever feel there's a font of ideas to fall back on.

When I perform onstage, I'm actually kind of nearsighted, so I don't have any real, true understanding of what the audience is like.