I can work on a verse for a very long time before realising it's not any good and then, and only then, can I discard it.

The obstacles are great and the suffering is great and people have got to make a living.

When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you.

It just takes a long time for me [to write a song]. I'm very slow. And it comes, kind of, by dribbles and drops.

ordinary eternal machinery, like the grinding of the stars

I felt like if any two people had any kind of sexual affinity for each other they had to sleep with each other immediately, otherwise it was a terrible betrayal and waste...Fortunately, I'm relieved of those obsessions now. It's really wonderful. It's really wonderful not feeling you have to sleep with everybody.

Be With Me In The Phases Of My Work Because My Brain Feels Like It Has Been Whipped And I Yearn To Make A Small Perfect Thing Which Will Live In Your Morning Like Curious Static Through A President's Elegy Or A Nude Hunchback Acquiring A Tan On The Crowded Oily Beach.