The purpose of rock n' roll is to convince girls to pay money to get close to you.

There's nothing left of my hometown in Kentucky. All those small and mid-sized towns and cities in the U.S. are just about malls around the edges and suburbs. That was definitely a loss, because everything just gets homogenized. You can't tell where you are, it's all the same.

I like writing non-fiction - and when you pick a [non-fiction] subject, it saves you the hassle of coming up with a plot.

I shake my head and the tiny acrobats fall like spangles, like the cool rain on another planet, down to the inside of my feet.

A memoir is a book about some particular thread or theme or moment in a person's life, whereas an autobiography is the entire life.

Another thing that's good about writing to describe a situation or a state of consciousness is that you can finally get it right. That was my intention, and that's always interesting.

Poetry's always dead, you know? You don't realize how good poetry is until 15 years later.