From the town of Lincoln Nebraska with a sawed off .410 on my lap, through the Badlands of Wyoming I killed everything in my path.

You may not be able to hit all the notes. That's OK. You may not have the clearest tone. You may not have the greatest range. But if you can inhabit your song, you can communicate.

I think that, when you're writing your songs, there's always a debate about whether, is that you in the song? Is it not you in the song?

I got Mary pregnant and man that's all she wrote. And for my 19th birthday, I got a union card and a factory coat.

Most artists I know consider themselves to be phonies, along with the feeling that there's something that you're doing is essential, essential to communicate, and deeply, deeply real.

The different social forces that affected my parents' lives or my friends' lives or I saw around me became essential for me to write about.

On any given night, what allows me to get to that higher ground is the audience.