I want to help people to not feel alone, like I feel and have felt for so long. Everybody's just trying their best. I guess I'm like an anti-star.

People tend to believe that I want to make soul music, which is not entirely untrue but, really, I want to be like the black Tom Waits - I don't want to make one kind of sound.

I'm very curious about people, and one of the most difficult truths for me to accept as a person is that I'll never be anyone else, and I will never fully understand anyone's perspective other than my own. Because I've come to some understanding of that, I feel it's this very difficult but worthwhile challenge to get as close as I possible can to that. If the only way that we can do that is through language, then that's how it has to be done.

I feel totally disconnected from reality in Washington. Maybe I'm just really pretentious - in fact, I probably am - but I feel like people in this city have no idea about where their reality is coming from and who is helping them to live in this illusion. I've gone from the south side of Chicago, where everyone is completely unrealistic about what's important in life to a place like this, where people are still unrealistic about what's important, but it's on two opposite sides of the spectrum. I just get tired of it all. It makes me really, really angry.

If the only thing that you want to do is make money - if that's your whole motivation - I think you're lying to yourself. If the only motivation you have is to make money and make it, what's making it? Oh, you get a yacht or an island. Well, you're going to need someone to be on that island. You're going to need people, one way or another.

I don't have a computer, but when I get access to one, I'm always looking myself up on Google, because it's exciting.

I would much rather not be the center of attention, and I'd much rather travel and be writing my novel, rather than standing on a stage and trying to get people to understand something.