Sometimes the magnetism of a song is impossible to ignore, and it demands that it be sung in a certain way.

Most songs have meager beginnings. You wake up in the morning, you throw on your suspenders, and you subvocalize and just think. They seem to form like calcium. I can't think of a story right off the bat that was that interesting. I write things on the back of my hand, usually, and sing into a tape recorder.

I'm trying to learn how to write faster.

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

Well I got a bad liver and broken heart, yeah,I drunk me a river since you tore me apart

When it's raining you can't find enough things to catch it in. When it's not you can stand out in the middle of the street in a dress and a funny hat and nothing's gonna make it rain. I go through periods - or spells - when I'm more receptive.

I used to imagine that making it in music - really making it in music - is if you're an old man going by a schoolyard and you hear children singing your songs, playing jump-rope, or on the swings. That's the ultimate. You're in the culture.