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.

Me, I'm spiritually retarded, I need to be knee deep in water with a fly rod in my hands, that's about as close to God as I get.

Back then, the business depended on bohemians. ... They needed Kristofferson and Roger Miller ..It was the tail end of something...the last Tin Pan Alley. ...and we were the night shift! They gave us keys, because they knew the best songs weren't written in daylight.... We got our keys taken away several times...me and Guy Clark.

It's incredibly irresponsible to allow victims' family members to witness executions.

New Orleans is a unique environment.

Sympathetic characters usually have a voice. They usually don't have any trouble being heard.

Or you can be like the Soviet Union, start out with ideals, and end up ceasing to exist.