For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive

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

If you don't connect yourself to your family and to the world in some fashion, through your job or whatever it is you do, you feel like you're disappearing, you feel like you're fading away, you know? I felt like that for a very very long time. Growing up, I felt like that a lot. I was just invisible; an invisible person. I think that feeling, wherever it appears, and I grew up around people who felt that way, it's an enormous source of pain; the struggle to make yourself felt and visible. To have some impact, and to create meaning for yourself, and for the people you come in touch with.

I never start with a political point of view. I believe that your politics are emotionally and psychologically determined by your early experiences.

I'm not in any rush. I'm not somebody who, if I write a song, I get it out. That's not something I've ever really quite done.

The school system only recognizes one type of intelligence. There are so many different types of intelligence.

...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.