People don't tend to notice, but in the past 10 years especially there's been a lot of growth in how I write songs and what goes into them. You can listen to Mountain Goats from 1991 to 2007 and never hear a seventh chord. In 2007 or 2008, I started working on the piano to grow as a songwriter. I started throwing major sevens in and sixes and more interesting stuff.

I don't celebrate milestones and I don't do anniversary editions. It's not my style to reflect on accomplishments.

I have a hunger for justice, but art is a place I've always enjoyed being able to be free - to live in worlds that you don't have to be thinking about that all the time. I don't see myself writing Upton Sinclair books. My books are to entertain, although to me, entertainment is to make you feel sadness or to get in touch with your own pain - or fear, or to remember somebody who has gone missing from your life. That's my calling.

If you're standing in the middle of a ring and you're playing the villain, and everyone is booing and throwing things at you, that's real.

If my songs are being listened to between any other songs, that is awesome, and I'm glad people are getting something out of them.

I make up stories that take place in real space with real people. If I could convert this into a technique for experimental novels, I might really be onto something.

I always worry that I'm a dilettante: I know something about lots of things but don't have exhaustive knowledge of much.