I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.

Life has its ups and downs, and time has to be your partner. Really, time is your soul mate.

That's another way of writing a song, of course. Just talking to somebody that ain't there. That's the best way. That's the truest way. Then it just becomes a question of how heroic your speech is. To me, it's something to strive after.

It's like going out to the desert and screaming and then having little kids throw their sandbox at you. I'm only 24.

You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way.

Because Dickens and Dostoyevsky and Woody Guthrie were telling their stories much better than I ever could, I decided to stick to my own mind.

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past - whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.