I was very fortunate in having David Fincher, the director come to me. Now I've seen the finished product, I feel that every bit of the nine months we spent on the film was worth it.

As an artist, you have to maintain focus and eliminate the distraction of second-guessing yourself based on the opinions of others.

I wrote "Miner's Prayer" after [grandfather] died. I'd gone back to his funeral, and he died in 1979. And I came back to California, and I think a couple of weeks after that funeral wrote that song thinking about him, his life.

My guitars, Cadillacs, and hillbilly music Is the only thing that keeps me hanging on.

Those songs [from church], I think, shaped to some degree how I would evolve as a writer, pentameter of songs, the melodies of those kind of hillbilly hymns - I used to refer to them - because they were not Southern gospel as much as they were passed down from Scottish Welsh Protestant hymnals.

I tried to pay some small tribute to A Man and a Woman (1966) with the recurring musical theme.

I think that we come to a greater understanding of the world we live in and ourselves through reading.