All I've ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful.

I'm not saying I wasn't flawed or amateurish. But you can never say I did anything to appease the music business.

More than anything that's been the thread through my life - the desire to write, the impulse to write. I mean, it's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing.

Hopefully if you create something fine, people will relate to it, so you're communicating with people, and you're not in a void. On the other hand, because you're always creating and transforming, art always separates you - always.

Writing is not some quiet, closet act.

Sometimes [people] seem to think I came out of the womb, you know, cursing, with an electric guitar.

Some of us are born rebellious. Like Jean Genet or Arthur Rimbaud, I roam these mean streets like a villain, a vagabond, an outcast, scavenging for the scraps that may perchance plummet off humanity's dirty plates, though often sometimes taking a cab to a restaurant is more convenient.