I have a theory that the people who cook in jails are British chefs.

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.

From the moment [Bob] Dylan arrived as a songwriter, he was [so] much better than everybody else around.

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.

I grew up counterculture. I'm essentially a hippie, and I'm essentially a folkie.

I don't really think in terms of obstacles. My biggest obstacle is always myself.

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.