I try not to be overly literal. When I'm writing songs, I write down a lot of words, and then I try to simplify it. I like to give people hints or words that make visual pictures for them.

People get strange about whether you've written your own songs, which seems really stupid considering that, especially in Country Music, it's about oral tradition and passing things on and the songs weren't meant to be played by one person and then forgotten.

There's no grand excellence to it. In my experience it was just almost the gulaggy boringness of it that'll kill you. You're just in this murk. And you're with other humans, but you lose all your human skills and it's just like you're in this plastic bag and you can't quite connect with people. You lose your ability to transmit electricity or something, and to receive it.

If you want to be noticed as a drop of water, why would you move to the ocean?

There's not like a science to it, necessarily, but I'm also the kind of person who spends a long time in the studio. I will spend my entire advance just getting it done, which is probably stupid, but I don't have extravagant taste. I mean, I paid for it, so there you go. Why not? The recording process is also very fun.

I'm not very interesting. Birds are interesting. I could stand there lip-synching all day long, but it would feel funny, and people would be able to tell. I'm not a good actress.

You can't just play the same thing, over and over again.