Every songwriter lives to have at least one song that a cab driver who asks 'You write anything I know?' will recognize.

But thankfully, my first album, Wide Screen, was sort of a critics darling - everyone raved about it, but no one bought it. They only manufactured 10,000 copies; I wasnt even in the running for failure!

A lot of my early career, I wrote story songs that had narratives, that had plots.

I always try to keep in mind that while the characters in a farce may find themselves in outrageous dilemmas, and may behave in a way that the audience finds amusing, the characters themselves don't have the consolation of knowing they're in a comedy.

Kipling said that Success and Failure are both imposters, and we should all listen to Kipling, if only because none of us are likely to know anybody else named Rudyard. But having been bitten in my life by the jaws of both victory and defeat, I must rush to add that success is to failure as butter pecan ice cream is to death.

I think writing for a world one has invented can be infinitely more interesting than writing for the world we've all inherited.

I don't want to own her, but I can't let her have it both ways. There is one too many of us.