I think I kind of approached music with this sort of, like, weird thing where I kinda set myself up where I could kinda be myself but not really. I kinda had a backdoor out. So if you criticized me, I kinda had my defenses working. And the problem is that some people seize on that as inauthenticity, which is understandable. So that's painful because it's not that you're being inauthentic...there's a difference between being a poseur and being someone who's so emotionally challenged they're kind of just doing their best to show you what they've got.

It's wonderful to read interviews by old blues guys - they talk about all their influences, they talk about who taught them how to play, and who they saw, and how they were determined to play that way.

Now the expectation is that, once the public decides that the artist is gentrified, the public demands that the artist stop growing. And [the public] actually puts all their energy into reasserting or re-establishing what the artist has long ago left behind. Because that's what they want. The source of creativity, the gift that's been given, be damned.

I grew up in the suburbs and basically associate the suburbs with cultural death.

I was brought up Roman Catholic. I'm not even baptized.

We love cats more than we love women [with Marilyn Manson].

I usually wake up far after breakfast. That's as much as you're going to find out about my dietary requirements other than marijuana and vodka.