I didn't know if it would be a successful one, or what the stages would be, but I always saw myself as a lifetime musician and songwriter...I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along...I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't...The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.

Someday girl, I don't know when, were gonna get to the place where we really want to go, and we'll walk in the sun. But til then, tramps like us, baby, we were born to run.

I think 1960s small-town America was very Lynchian. Everything was there, but underneath, everything was rumbling.

This music is forever for me. It's the stage thing, that rush moment that you live for. It never lasts, but that's what you live for.

The first thing that I do when I come out every night is to look at the faces in front of me, very individually.

The question of whether we were misled into the war in Iraq isn't a liberal or conservative or Republican or Democratic question, it's an American one. Protecting the democracy that we ask our sons and daughters to die for is our responsibility and our trust. Demanding accountability from our leaders is our job as citizens. It's the American way. So may the truth win out.

All you can do is show people...You tell stories that are true and compelling.