I'm not a Democrat; I'm something well to the left of a Democrat, but I'm just realistic about the system.

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.

My main area of activism is the death penalty, and it will continue to be once this crisis is over with.

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

Fundamentalism, as practiced by the Taliban, is the enemy of real thought, and religion, too.

What songwriting does better than almost anything is empathy - it's incredibly empathetic. The reason people sat around in bars when they were bummed out and listened to country songs is because it made them feel better in the long run.

I was comparatively late in understanding Bob Dylan's overwhelming importance as a songwriter. Everybody who does my job exists in the shadow of Bob Dylan. There are two categories: Dylan and everybody else. It's as simple as that. And it's going to be that way until he dies.