I enjoy performing, always, but when you're taping a gig, you've got to blank out this mass apparatus of self-consciousness that's surrounding you, this invitation to drown in self-consciousness. Otherwise you just won't be able to do anything.

I think you should, yeah. You should wash your beard, then shave it off, nail it to a Frisbee and fling it over a rainbow.

You know, just sometimes, in between the first cigarette with coffee in the morning to that four hundredth glass of cornershop piss at 3am, you do sometimes look at yourself and think...This is fantastic. I'm in heaven.

I write all the time, but you just want to be careful what you put out. That's all. You want to have the confidence that you've done what you need to do to it, because otherwise it's an exercise in vanity.

I've always wanted to visit [Washington]. The Smithsonian has some fantastic archival material on blues music, which I'm really into. There's a ton of stuff I want to do there. but it just never happened.

When things are going well, I can't write fast enough to keep up with my mind. Writing walks, speech runs and talk flies. Other times, though, it's like fishing.

Shame is one of the greatest aphrodisiacs in the world, anyway, built into religion.