I'm sort of a cavedweller: I miss my house, my yard, my kitchen, my wife. The trees. When I get home, I like to get down into my office neighborhood as soon as I can.

There are real teachers out there; I don't pretend to have their mantle.

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

I consider myself a lyricist first and foremost, but if you get something else out of what I do, that's fine too. I'm not sitting back here telling people how they have to take my stuff. We just want to play music, and hope that people like it.

When you punish a person for dreaming his dream, don't expect him to thank or forgive you.

I don't like to say, "Oh, I don't like this kind of music." I like to listen to it and try to see what people who like it get out of it.

I wrote short stories when I was a teenager, but they weren't any good and I kinda knew it.