I'm not a playwright. The people in my songs are all me.

Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than those who are most content.

Popular music had never had lyrical sophistication of this type [like Bob Dylan]; wit, to be sure, but "Darkness at the break of noon/Shadows even the silver spoon/The handmade blade, the child's balloon/Eclipses both the sun and moon/To understand you know too soon/ There is no sense in trying"? No.

I felt like I might as well have been living in another part of the solar system.

Art is a never-ending dance of illusions.

Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else.

Aretha with no goals, eternally single & one step soft of heaven/ let it be understood that she owns this melody along with her emotional diplomats & her earth & her musical secrets