Everybody is so goddamn sure of themselves, it just makes you realize this is the curse of the modern world.

I think maybe it's my personality. People don't like my face.

I guess the things I have always loved are from people who were just being themselves. They were doing these things because they couldn't do it any other way. It was for them.

This [Thelonious Monk: The Life And Times Of An American Original] is another one of those books with the perfect blend of anecdote and analysis. The analysis is built into the anecdote. It has that right feel about it. It's not too scholarly, either.

[He Stopped Loving Her Today] is all about the experience of being alive and the thought process of consciousness, and then you have these polemical essay-type things going on for a couple decades now. Some of these music books are where you're going to see an anecdote of a person behaving without some kind of commentary.

"He Stopped Loving Her Today" a fascinating book about the making of a record. Really, to be honest, it has some of the best George Jones anecdotes I've ever read, like cocaine psychosis causing this personality called "the Duck."

It's weird. People want you to know that they write. They want you to know they're a musician, rather than making music or making stories. It's the strangest thing.