I never set out to write songs about the world around me... it just kind of came about as a result of paying more attention to things.

Most of the music you hear on the radio today is developed for making money. It doesn't feel true or honest. You can feel it in the music.

If something bothers me, it bothers me for a long time until I find a way to work it out. Music provided me with a means of working things out.

Maybe I spent more time dwelling on emotions than some people, and maybe that's why I ended up writing.

And I've been walking 'round with memories way too long.

I honestly don't listen to a lot of music - I spend so much time working at my own music.

I was mainly influenced by the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, and others like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash.

We got CEOs making 200 times the worker's pay, but they'll fight like hell against raising the minimum wage.

I've always written about things that cause me to feel something.

This is how it has been since time began: If you want to make something really worthwhile and true, then you have to suffer for it.

I've always been aware of having feelings that were pretty intense at times. I imagine most people have had that, or they wouldn't be human.

Wasted time means wasted lives.

I love anybody funny. I think my ten-year-old sister is really funny. She makes me laugh way more than most people do.

An extraordinary writer....It is the vastness of Nick Tosches’ heart that makes it possible to reveal the darkness.

Isn't it nice to know that you can put a worm on your hook and get a fish all charged up?

Orators are most vehement when they have the weakest cause, as men get on horseback when they cannot walk.

There we times when everybody in the house has the flu. You're cleaning up vomit and it's 2 in the morning, and you're wishing there was somebody else there to help you.

I said it was my feeling that the American people would struggle for peace, and that has since been underscored by the President of these United States.

Our limitations serve, our wounds serve, even our darkness can serve.

We're all looking for something, something to be.

The decision to do it [play Maigret] was related to the fact that the character is a very ordinary man, and generally speaking I haven't played very many ordinary men.