By the time I wrote those first three songs for his new CD ... I wanted to push the poetics as hard as I could push them, and not decide the songs were finished until I committed them to whatever the recording format was. I went through drafts right up until I recorded every single one of them.

What saves me from being a drug addict is sort of the opposite. It's me realizing that I don't really control anything.

I ain't ever satisfied.

Critics are notoriously liberal with their use of the term 'genius'.

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 don't think I'm a political songwriter as much as I am just a political person. I think it's in my fabric.

I think it's obvious that democracy is something that is contagious, and it always has been.