I sit here in this chair, I pour myself some whiskey, and watch my troubles vanish into the air.

I am not overlooking any mail. I'm looking at all of it. I even wrote back to the Viagra people.

What I'm most pleased about is that there's no particular decline. The songs I wrote 40 years ago are no worse and no better - there's a consistency.

The belief in the '70s was that music was changing the world. I never believed that it had that great an effect. The effect Madonna had on fashion and sort of mores of young girls was a bigger deal than anything Dylan may have said, even.

Don't forget to bring that little blonde haired girl along. You know the one, love to watch her jump up and down.

Writers have always liked my stuff, pretty much. That's what I wanted - I think my goal wasn't to get rich and famous, necessarily, though I cared about that. I always thought, "Oh, this could be a hit," or "that will sell records." But the first thing I wanted was that people who knew a lot about music, or had taste-making qualities, they would like my stuff. Writers, people like that.

If we'd had another carefree 70s, I'd have been dead. It was a little too carefree, you know? I don't know how carefree they were for me, I think I was worried then, I can't remember what about.