If you've got great parents, once you grow up and have to live by yourself, you're going to create some fake self as you get comfortable wherever you are.

I know that New York is big, there are huge buildings, but in fact, it's quite small and contained.

When I started writing again, especially when I listened to French music and Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, I realized that these lots talked about themselves. The greatest artists, they didn't sing; they only spoke.

When you look at the media and television, and all this Hollywood stuff, you just judge people.

The experience that I had in Paris I could never have ever again in my life. This is when I grew up as a young man. I was independent. There was no one there to talk to; I didn't even want to talk to anyone. I started to write about what I was experiencing, and I had no choice, so I was never scared.

I wasn't quite used to writing a diary - I didn't understand why people did it - but I wrote down notes and they went into a poem.

Composing was more difficult than writing things down.