I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?

The bands and the roadies, love 'em and leave 'em. It's pleasure to try 'em, but trouble to keep 'em.

At the point where I'm trying to force something and it's not happening, and I'm getting frustrated with, say, writing a poem, I can go and pick up the brushes and start painting. At the point where the painting seems to not be going anywhere, I go and pick up the guitar.

When you're trying to pass on the best of the stuff you're culling to what should be a hungry culture but you have it diminished... that's kind of disappointing.

I prefer Christmas, which is everybody's holiday. It's just my nature. I don't like to be zeroed in on en masse.

Land of snap decisions, land of short attention spans, nothing is savored long enough to really understand.

Edith Piaf knocked my socks off when I was 8, but I didn't know what she was singing about.