It's hard to be serious about so many things. [Look at the whole emphasis] on the charts, if you're a songwriter.

I see people allowing their lives to diminish, to become shallow, so they can't enjoy the deep wells of experience. Maybe it's always been this way, when the heart tends to shut down. If only the heart shut down and there were no repercussions, it would be O.K., but when the heart shuts down, the whole system goes into a kind of despair that is intolerable.

Probably all cultures, certainly Western culture, always have been violent.

And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moths.

People used to say my music was too difficult or too obscure, and I never set out to be difficult or obscure. I just set out to write what I felt as honestly as I could, and I am delighted when other people feel a part of themselves in the music.

I won't comment on what Bob Dylan said, but I will comment on his receiving the Nobel Prize, which to me is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.

Seriousness is not Calvinistic, it's not a renunciation, it's the very opposite of that.