You could listen to Woody Guthrie songs and actually learn how to live.

Well the book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the law of the jungle and the sea are your only teachers.

You got men who can't hold peace and women who can't control their tongues. The rich seduce the poor, and the old seduce the young.

Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.

I'm good with songs I haven't written, if I like them. I'm glad I didn't write any of them. I already know how they go, so I have more freedom with them. I understand these songs. I've known them for 40 years, 50 years, maybe longer, and they make a lot of sense. So I'm not coming to them like a stranger.

My songs were influenced not so much by poetry on the page but by poetry being recited by the poets who recited poems with jazz bands.

When you got nothin' / You got nothin' to lose.