The goal of all my work is essentially the same: demonstrating that magic is real or that reality is magic, by paying attention, and finding compensation or consolation for what is essentially a tragic existence.

Songs came first. I started out in 1965 trying to copy the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Stones, like most kids I knew. I'm still trying. Songs are hard to beat.

The goal of all my work is essentially the same: demonstrating that magic is real or that reality is magic, by paying attention, and finding compensation or consolation for what is essentially a tragic existence.

I've written a lot of wordy, erudite, pretentious songs, but believe it or not, I'm usually doing my damnedest to resist the temptation to be overly "clever," and trying to keep things as accessible - and singable - as possible.

I'd done a drawing of the model using only peripheral vision, looking at a spot on the wall to the right of where she sat. It wasn't really a drawing of her I produced; it was a drawing of the cloud of lights and darks she dissolved into when I focused on the spot. You could look at my drawing of this cloud and read it as a nude female figure, though a little translation was required.

My ignorance would require a volume to itself. Between its covers would be preserved a record of the spurious model of all creation I had in my head, a prelapsarian construct, uncorrupted by the facts.

Some songs seem to achieve the quality of a geometric object - a ball, box, or cone - and I don't mess with 'em.