You know, I'm not comfortable with people whose politics are static in a democracy.

Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.

You can go out and find ways to make your own record and get it out there now. If you really want to, you can be heard. Keep things simple. Learn to go out and play solo. That's a really really good thing to learn, if you're a singer-songwriter. Don't be dependent on a band because you may not always be able to afford one.

All we do as songwriters is rewrite the songs that have impressed us till we find our own voice. It's part of learning the craft.

You make decisions, and that's what separates art from some other pop music. It doesn't mean that you can't make an embarrassing amount of money, for a borderline Marxist, doing something that you love, but it does mean that this huge pool of money that was out there when I started making records in the '80s is gone.

I do not believe Tony Blair was a fundamentally good man who went bad. I believe he was evil in the first place.

At home, I'm lucky if I can write three or four hours before the phone starts ringing and the kids want to go to soccer.