If a person wants to be atheistic it's his God-given right to be an atheist.

I lived in Italy for a number of years and I was really digging around trying to get my hands dirty, trying to learn about Italian music. And what I ended up gravitating towards was this stuff from the '50s and '60s and maybe early '70s, where there were these incredibly talented pop singers that weren't using pop bands.

We just wanna be the happy bums that we are. That's all.

When you start to kind of immerse yourself in that improvisation culture, you gotta be comfortable enough with your instrument to throw yourself into a really potentially dangerous situation.

I think that too many people think too much about my lyrics. I am more a person who works with the sound of a word than with its meaning. Often I just choose the words because of the rhythm not because of the meaning.

I guess I'm getting to the age where a lot of other people my age have real jobs, and when they're hard-up they refer to an old-timer like me.

The creative process for a musician is very different than for a filmmaker. I have an idea and I can pretty much execute it. As old as I am now and as long as I've been doing it, I can pretty much get it done in a week. While a filmmaker has a great idea that should be out tomorrow, but he has to go through this process of getting financing, then selling it, then casting. I've always been in awe of filmmakers and their patience in realizing their vision because I could never do that.