Politics has always been in my music. Anybody who doesn't understand how political "Copperhead Road" is isn't listening very well.

You know I ain't never prayed before 'Cause it always seemed to me That prayin's the same as beggin' Lord, I don't take no charity.

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

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.

I'll never believe that Americans have racticed in our history anything close to the purest form of democracy of the world. Because there are lots of democracies around the world that function better than ours does. It's always been that way. There's some truth to the idea that it's rigged, but there is a way that it's supposed to work that.

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.

I'm supposed to make people cry, but not by manipulating.