Life is hard, you're tired, and there's disease. The strategy that works for children is to be delighted by the things that delight you.

I'll keep making records until I don't have more ideas for records.

In wrestling, people just throw each other around, possibly actually bleed, and are still friends in the locker room afterwards. But there's a real glee - a feeling goes up in the arena, especially on non-TV days. If it's just people in a room and somebody starts to bleed, that's very exciting.

I grew up around some people whose parents toured a lot: tough on the marriage, tough on the kids.

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

Life is hard, you're tired, and there's disease. The strategy that works for children is to be delighted by the things that delight you.

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.