I remember when people used to think I was smart. I remember when people used to think my brain was useful. Damaged by water, sure. And ready to seizure at any moment. But still useful, and maybe even a little bit beautiful and sacred and magical.

The poetry, if you will, of life is reduced to this sort of dry, scientific, you know, it's the worst sort of précis of who we are.

When you construct a mix tape, the first song you come out with has to be a barnburner.

I recognize now that the conditions that Indians are living in are the conditions that poor people everywhere are living in.

I wanted to do a weird book and reestablish my independent, small-press roots.

Is revenge a circle inside of a circle inside of a circle?

I write less about alcohol, less and less and less. You 're an addict - so of course you write about the thing you love most. I loved alcohol the most, loved it more than anybody or anything. That's what I wrote about. And it certainly accounted for some great writing. But it accounted for two or three years of good writing - it would never account for 20 years of good writing. I would have turned into Charles Bukowski. He wrote 10,000 poems and 10 of them were great.