I wanted to be a poet and/or an artist, but I was very lazy (frightened of failure, I guess) and drank too much.

I remember Bob Dylan saying in an interview that at a certain point he'd had to learn to do consciously what he'd previously done unconsciously or automatically. That resonates.

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.

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.

One of the beauties of working in radio is the way a whole setting can be richly evoked simply by the addition to the track of a little birdsong and a church bell in the distance.

For decades I'd flit from drawing table to typewriter to guitar with no sense of strain or contradiction. They all exercised the same psychic muscle (the Imagination), and working in one medium refreshed my appetite for the others.

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