You can go from doing something quite silly to something dead serious in the blink of an eye, and if you're making those connections with your audience then they're going to go right along with it.

We're gonna play some pool, skip some school, act real cool, stay out all night, it's gonna be alright.

Walk tall, or baby don't walk at all.

Some guys they just give up living, and start dying little by little, piece by piece.

The story I have told throughout my work life I could not have told as well without Clarence.

I always write with an audience in mind. If I feel that [connection] coming back at me then I feel like I'm doing my job. That's why people come to my music - for some emotional experience or a perspective, either on their own lives, or on the world that they're living in.

Work creates an enormous sense of self and I saw that in my mother. She was an enormous, towering figure to me in the best possible way. I picked up a lot of things from her in the way that I work... I also picked up a lot of the failings of when your father doesn't have those things and that results in a house that turns into a minefield.