I write songs. Then I record them. And later, maybe I perform them on stage. That's what I do. That's my job. Simple. I don't feel comfortable doing interviews. My profession is music, and writing songs. I like to do it, but I hate to talk about it...Music is spiritual. The music business is not. Being famous was extremely disappointing for me. When I became famous it was a complete drag and it is still a complete drag.

Every performance is different. That's the beauty of it.

When I started out in this business, I was a performer before I was a songwriter, I was a performer before I was recording. Performing is the roots. That's where it all came from. You didn't start out doing it because you wanted to make an album.

There's no difference between lyrics and poetry. Words are words. The only difference is the people who are in academic positions and call themselves poets and have an academic stance. They've got something to lose if they say it's all poetry; if there's not music to it, and you have to wear a certain kind of checkered shirt or something like that. It's all the same. Lyrics are lyrics, poetry is poetry, lyrics are poetry, and poetry is lyrics. They are interchangeable to me.

If you're a pop singer, you don't need to evolve. You just get a set together, have some hit songs and play them over and over.

I haven't really heard much that's impressed me the way it was when I first heard Ray Charles or somebody like that. That was really an impression.

I just wanted to stop and try to get some perspective. [ A Period of Transition] it was just a matter of wanting to review the whole thing...to try and get some relationship to what I was doing.