I used to hide my real emotions in gobbledegook, like in In His Own Write. When I wrote teenage poems, I wrote in gobbledegook because I was always hiding my real emotions from Mimi.

I want it to sound like an orange.

Most of the songs came from Europe and Africa and now they were coming back to us. Many of [Bob] Dylan's best songs came from Scotland, Ireland or England. It was a sort of cultural exchange.

If somebody gives me a joint, I might smoke it, but I don't go after it.

'Revolution' . There were two versions of that song but the underground left only picked up on the one that said 'count me out'.

How poetry comes to the poet is a mystery.

I'm always proud and pleased when people do my songs. It gives me pleasure that they even attempt them, because a lot of my songs aren't that doable.