My best songs were written very quickly. Just about as much time as it takes to write it down is about as long as it takes to write it...In writing songs I've learned as much from Cezanne as I have from Woody Guthrie...It's not me, it's the songs. I'm just the postman, I deliver the songs...I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet.

I like spiritual songs. They struck me as truthful and serious. They brought me down to earth and they lifted me up all in the same moment.

The confessional singer-songwriter movement of the 1970s was in full swing, and Bob Dylan's emotional album [ Blood on the Tracks] resonated with the times. There would be other hits, but never the same alchemy of emotion and time.

When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to loose.

I've never gone for having a great voice, for cultivating one. I'm still not doing it now.

Too much information about nothing.

Last night I danced with a stranger, but she just reminded me you were the one.