Now I'm having to live with sales of around 50,000 per album - but I'm pretty content with my place in the general scheme of things, even if it's meant I don't drive a fancy car and can't afford grand vacations.

I didn't really escape that gravity until I moved 300 miles south to go to college at 18, where authorship no longer seemed something liable to induce vengeful punishment.

My faith, inasmuch as I have any, is more like a kind of Joseph Campbell thing, and even that frequently finds itself tested to oblivion in siren waters.

Whatever the opposite of regret is best describes how I've always felt about that decision - it opened me up to a million creative opportunities I needed to experience away from the bull and distorting mirrors that fame engenders.

I'd make a terrible practitioner of any religion in any formal setting.

The statistics of mines that need clearance are staggering but the truth is it's a challenge that is absolutely doable.

I've been getting pretty focused about that recently, and even considered doing a masters degree to polish up the craft. I've been pretty lucky in that I seem to have found people online who are willing to constructively tear it apart for me, and indicate its weaknesses.