The songs themselves do broaden out as time passes and take on subtly different meanings, take on more meaning, I find.

Badlands, you got to live it everyday, let the broken hearts stand as the price you've got to pay.

You'll walk with me out on the wire, cuz baby, I'm just a scared and lonely rider, but I gotta know how it feels... I want to know love is wild, babe, I want to know love is real.

It took quite a bit of work and time and mistakes to begin to feel - to understand the strength that comes along with building a home life.That was very mysterious to me. I was very skeptical of it for a long time, and didn't understand it fully until Patti [ Scialfa] and I got together.

In the third grade, a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that's where I belonged. I also had the distinction of being the only altar boy knocked down by a priest during mass.

You can't be afraid of getting old. Old is good, if you're gathering in life. Our band is good at understanding that equation.

...It's all sort of dreams and it's all illusion. It's theater; it's not real. We're making up stories, you know, and people tend to run into you and believe you are your characters. And I suppose the funny thing is the longer you go, you do become sort of some version of [your characters]. You both diverge from them - you know - you live, but you also permanently inhabit that geography and that mental space - and so you do morph a little bit. We do become what we imagine.