When I walk around New York now, there are so many ghosts. I find it very uncomfortable. There were many hard years, and I never really achieved any kind of comfortable financial success, so I just associate it with struggle. When I had a chance to get out, I was elated.

I am definitely less and less interested in music made by people that exist today, people that are living. I just see them as part of the whole stupid process of the music business, desperate (even if they feign indifference) to get noticed, trying to "make it" in the stinking music business, to become "famous" etc, and it disgusts me.

I'm just as comfortable performing solo with just my acoustic guitar and vocal as I am with a band. The main thing for me is that the performance remain rooted in the words and voice, that there be no place to hide.

The music takes you. It has to be alive. It's like you hammer something, and the way it happens to bleed leads you into new directions.

I'm pretty confident that people are going to come along for the ride. If they don't, tough.

I'm a producer in the old-school way - not just some slacker working on Pro Tools.

You make your work and you can't ask for approval when you're doing it. Otherwise, it's going to be untruthful in some way.