It's hard for the modern generation to understand Thoreau, who lived beside a pond but didn't own water skis or a snorkel.

I'm writing about what's happening to me now. I mean, I had a hip replacement a couple of years ago. I have a song about that. And why wouldn't you? It strikes me that that was a huge event. It's kind of funny and horrible and interesting, so why wouldn't one write about that?

After a war, after a concentration camp, I find it's not too difficult to be happy.

Doomsday is quite within our reach, if we will only stretch for it.

My father writings stuff was always his personal stuff, like about the day we had to put our dog down, or finding old photographs of his father, or passing a guy he went to boarding school with on a street in New York. Very specific, detailed, descriptive columns that he wrote. I think in a way, it could be argued that my best songs are that way too. They're almost journalistic in that they're very clear, and very specific, and they describe things.

It's hard for the modern generation to understand Thoreau, who lived beside a pond but didn't own water skis or a snorkel.

Displaying a bland, even an eerie, disregard for what appeared to be the facts of the situation, he fell back on an old habit of looking ahead to the next defeat.