The most wretched people in the world are those who tell you they like every kind of music 'except country.' People who say that are boorish and pretentious at the same time.

I feel sorry for people who have to edit me. Which is why book writing is by far the most enjoyable. Really the only thing it's based on is whether it's good or not. No book editor, in my experience, is getting a manuscript and trying to rewrite it.

In New York, people are unhappy on purpose, because unhappiness makes them seem more complex; in Washington DC it just sort of works out that way.

It's peculiar what you remember when you're not trying.

We are always dying, all the time. That's what living is; living is dying, little by little. It is a sequenced collection of individualized deaths.

To me, every interview, even if you love the artist, needs to be somewhat adversarial. Which doesn't mean you need to attack the person, but you do need to look at it like you're trying to get information that has not been written about before.

If I basically view criticism as sort of an interesting form of writing about oneself, an interesting form of autobiography, then I don't feel any pressure to have any kind of authoritative, universal voice. That kind of thing has never interested me.