In adolescence you have to separate yourself and establish your identity. So, being very independent anyway, I took charge.

There is a core of loneliness. It's partly existential. Secondly, I was raised a loner. My parents were not there. My father was asked to leave because he couldn't metabolize ethanol. Actually, my mother ran away with us when I was 2 months old and my brother was 5. Real dramatic stuff: down the fire escape, through backyards. So, I sort of raised myself. I was alone a lot and I invented myself - I lived through the radio and through my imagination.

Once you leave the womb, conservatives don't care about you until you reach military age. Then you're just what they're looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.

The rebellious mood of the country during those [60th] years allowed me to plug right back into my old hatreds. I could scream and holler, as I did on the albums, against religion, government, big business - all those assholes and their values. That hatred was very real.

In football the object is to march into enemy territory and cross his goal. In baseball the object is to go home.