This one guy's wife is such a pretty brown thing, that I'm liable to give her a poke or two. Whaddaya think of that?

Mostly, I don't write overtly personal stuff.

The best of my songs are more than just a joke. There's something else going on - a character, or it's not just a plain joke.

I've always had a lot of respect from the people I respected.

Some fools in the desert with nothing to do...invented me, and they invented you. And other fools keep it all going and growing. Everybody, we're a figment of their imagination.

I've written about a lot of different things, but the whole idea of writing for another character is unusual for pop music... Most of the repertory is love songs, and most of mine isn't. I don't know if that's a mental defect, or shyness, or what.

I've written a song for Prince. I never showed it to Prince, but just to see if I could do it. At the time, when I sort of knew him, he was recording a song a day. I wondered if I could do that. So I wrote it.