Anything that is within you is a gift. To be able to take possession of that and say, "Whatever it is, I am bigger than it," is to learn to cherish even the hard and painful things.

People talk about songwriting or comedy as creative expression, but life is creative expression. Table-making, even nursing, is extraordinarily creative.

I'm not really a goal-oriented guy. I started doing the Mountain Goats just for the sheer hell of it.

Everybody experiences reality in a way that's only true for them.

You're not really going to know what a place is like 'til you've lived there a few years - you sort of just have to go with your gut.

When I became conscious of being a person, when I was very small, I knew that I was from Indiana, but I had never seen Indiana. I was born there, but we moved when I was, like, a year old. I always had a sense of a place that was far away from where I was. I would research it and find out about it and I remember on Christmas morning I used to always call Indiana to find out what the weather was like; to see if it was snowing or not.

Conservative forces in the South have a lot of power - almost dynastic - dating back many years.