Misery is the River of the World

For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.

Most of us have the residue of thousands of songs in our ears, that if you end up songwriting, I think you're mostly smoking the residue of all that material you absorbed over time.

My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.

I'll take a rusty nail and scratch your initials on my arm.

My first big gig was an opening show for Frank Zappa, and I think that was difficult.

If you record the sound of bacon in a frying pan and play it back, it sounds like the pops and cracks on an old 33 1/3 recording. Almost exactly like that. You could substitute it for that sound.