There's a deep tribal aspect to my own nature. So when I'm in contact with those deep resources, of course I feel a very special kind of nourishment.

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

Something I wrote quite a few years ago was, "The voices in my head, they don't care what I do, they just want to argue the matter through and through." It is a common mistake, to think you're going to go into some kind of spiritual practice and you're going to be relieved of the human burdens, from human crosses like thought, jealousy, despair - in fact, if anything, these feelings are amplified.

Most of the time one is discouraged by the work, but now and again by some grace something stands out and invites you to work on it, to elaborate it or animate it in some way. It's a mysterious process.

Out of the thousands who are known or who want to be known as poets, maybe one or two are genuine and the rest are fakes, hanging around the sacred precincts, trying to look like the real thing.

When things get really bad, just raise your glass and stamp your feet and do a little jig. That's about all you can do.

We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it's very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to what?