I lost my daughter at 21. I had to give her up because I was broke, no place to take her, no money to take her. That was very traumatic.

The considerations of a corporation, especially now, have nothing to do with art or music.

My first four albums covered the usual youth problems - looking for love in all the wrong places - while the next five are basically about being in your 30s.

I don't like being too looked up at or too looked down on. I prefer meeting in the middle to being worshiped or spat out.

I'm a night owl.

I find a lot of poetry to be narcissistic.

I'm not a pitiable creature. It's just that I suffer very eloquently.

I don't like to make fluffy little songs, but now I want to make some light songs.

I used to be monastic, almost. Now I'm like a Tibetan that has discovered hamburgers and television. I'm catching up on Americana.

The coming of the kids hasn't come out in my art yet.

I had made all these rules for myself: I'm not writing social commentary, I'm not writing love songs.

Buddy Holly and the early rock 'n' roll was no lighter than the way I play. It's very minimal.

Paul Simon started piling up a lot of words, more than the bar could handle, and I stopped!

Not to dismiss Gershwin, but Gershwin is the chip; Ellington was the block.

There was this mountain village in Russia where my music was getting in on some German radio station. I remember this because music used to get up to Saskatchewan from Texas. Late at night after the local station closed down.

With a painting, you don't have to go back and paint it again.

I can't remember anything I ever wrote.

Nobody understood The Reoccurring Dream, but after September 11, when we were coerced to do a national duty and go out and shop, surely people could begin to see what I was getting at.

I hate show business.

We managed to put together a compilation that had some creativity to it. In the meantime I was listening to the free radio stations and I noticed that during their war coverage they were playing these songs born out of the Vietnam War that were all critical of the soldiers.

When you're trying to pass on the best of the stuff you're culling to what should be a hungry culture but you have it diminished... that's kind of disappointing.

In some ways, my gift for music and writing was born out of tragedy, really, and loss.

I've got 50 different tunings in the guitar.

In New York, the street adventures are incredible. There are a thousand stories in a single block. You see the stories in the people's faces. You hear the songs immediately. Here in Los Angeles, there are less characters because they're all inside automobiles.