Becoming interested in poetics got me interested in theater. Theater is supposed to be poetry, you know, before it's anything else. It just doesn't fly if it isn't musical.

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.

My dad was in a wheelchair and on oxygen for the last few years of his life.

Politics and music don't necessarily go hand in hand. They just do for me.

I think the criticism that I take to heart is from other writers that I respect.

Maybe I'm not as big a star as Bruce Springsteen because I'm not as good. I don't know. It doesn't matter. I still have an audience of a certain size. I think it's one of the things I'm luckiest.

Every day on Earth is another chance to get it right.