Fashion costs money, but songs are free. You can write them for free and you can sing them for free and they can infect those around you or the people from the future and they can sing them for free too.

So much of our culture is bought and manufactured - not to say great art can't come out of that. Some art is really amazing that is manufactured and sold, like action movies and stuff.

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.

The things that I have loved have always been those extremes where there has been some kind of apocalypse in the person's life, and they come out unscathed or scathed.

I'm shocked and surprised by people that are shocked and surprised that certain things in life are made up or not as true as you might believe them to be.

With my stuff, I think I've tried. I've been courted. I don't want to sound like an asshole, but I've been courted to be someone who could sell a lot of books.