I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.

A mental midget with the IQ of a fence post.

It's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace, and a wound that will never heal. No prima donna, the perfume is on an old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey. Goodnight to the street sweepers, the night watchmen flame keepers and goodnight, Matilda, too.

I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We're all looking at the wrapping. But we won't tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath.

I'm trying to learn how to write faster.

Songs really are like a form of time travel because they really have moved forward in a bubble. Everyone who's connected with it, the studio's gone, the musicians are gone, and the only thing that's left is this recording which was only about a three-minute period maybe 70 years ago.

The moon was sharp enough to draw blood from a stone