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.

But the star thing I can live with. The music I can't live without. And that's how it lays out for me, you know. I got as big an ego and enjoy the attention.

I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.

When I was very, very young, I decided that I was gonna catalogue my times because that's what other people who I admired did. That's what Bob Dylan did, that's what Frank Sinatra did, Hank Williams did, in very different ways.

When it comes to luck, you make your own.

I'm interested in what it means to be an American. I'm interested in what it means to live in America. I'm interested in the kind of country that we live in and leave our kids. I'm interested in trying to define what that country is.

I never knew anybody who was unhappy with their job and was happy with their life. It's your sense of purpose. Now, some people can find it elsewhere. Some people can work a job and find it some place else.