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 can deal with conservatives in a democracy. With real conservatives, I don't agree with them, but I understand why they believe what they believe and I believe they're being honest with me about it.

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.

The stupidest thing that a writer can do is write a memoir I think, unless it's right before you die -- maybe.

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.

My dad was in a wheelchair and on oxygen for the last few years of his life.

My politics were really radical when I was younger, and then I moderated like everyone else does when they start having kids.