But it's only after you've played it on the road 20 or 30 times that it becomes really finished and polished...and you realize what it means, and you get the phrasing right.

Photographers and reporters are mostly after me. They want to know what I read and what I'm like and I don't really know myself, so how can I tell them?

It's a real wrenching thing to go from being a private person to being a public person, especially when you're being autobiographical.

Sobering up was responsible for breaking up my marriage. That's what it couldn't stand.

Shower the people you love with love.

I typically will work on a lyric in a three-ring binder. On the right side, I'll write the lyric, and on the left side, I put in alternate things...and things that might be alternates or improvements. I'll turn the page and do it again. I'll turn the page and do it again, or incorporate the improvements. Eventually, I end up with some material, and often it needs to be ordered.

Somehow it helps just to take something that's internal and externalize it, to see it in front of you.