Avant-garde is the one area of music that has never changed. It doesn't mean anything.

I don't think there is anything hard at all about having a lot of songs. It makes it easier to be less precious about them, and know that everybody's going to want to work on some of them.

My highest aspirations as a songwriter are that people would sing my songs or know songs I've written sometime in as far into the future as I feel comfortable seeing.

I honestly don't remember the book well enough to register any surprise about anything. I don't remember anything being shocking to me.

I don't know if experimental is a word I would ever use comfortably.

I spent a fair amount of time editing the lyrics and allowing the song to kind of evolve. ... anytime there's anything worthwhile, it certainly 'feels' like it happened on the spur of the moment, but it's a composite of lots of spurs of the moment, hopefully. And over time, you catch up with those, and then you have a full set of lyrics you've thought of and you feel comfortable singing.

I don't really feel like you're making a record unless you pay attention to it.