...we're all in a soup of trying to live by words, and trying to live by poetry. It's both humbling, and really flattering to know that my words are part of all that.

I'm amazed at the adolescent nature of some of the religious fanatics in our government. And they're full of double standards.

Now that I believe in God, I have an extra layer of saying I'll write about what I write about and assume that I'm being offered the opportunity to illuminate something important. But when you think you are too important, you become some sort of fascist.

I was raised by parents who really admired the religious leaders of the left, as many 60s and 70s liberals did.

It's just that you don't have to bring it to every stage. You can do a fundraiser for people that you support. You don't necessarily have to talk about one thing or another when you're on your own.

Mortal City was really influenced by geography. [The song] "The Ocean" is the Pacific Northwest. Southern California and New York also figure into songs, and Iowa. "February" is very much about New England. "Mortal City" is Philadelphia. The whole album is this anthropomorphized landscape where the metaphors live in this geography.

I am one of those sort of "lesser" types, those sensitive types, those people who wouldn't have made it on their own if other people hadn't helped them. A straightforward capitalist society would've cut them off and let them die. So I was saved by my friends and by my family and by people who cared about me, and by modern psychotherapy that cared about women.