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.

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

I wasn't raised to not write about issues, and I'm just living in really politically charged times. You know, I'd rather write songs about girls, but it's just hard to do right now.

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.

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

Politics and music don't necessarily go hand in hand. They just do for me.