I was writing poetry, and the Mountain Goats was an outgrowth of that.

You can get really good reads on your dreams if you think of every character in them as actually being you.

There are only two stories: either you go forward or you die.

Life is hard, you're tired, and there's disease. The strategy that works for children is to be delighted by the things that delight you.

People talk about songwriting or comedy as creative expression, but life is creative expression. Table-making, even nursing, is extraordinarily creative.

Good things never last, bad things never die.

One way you can get really close to God is to sin as hard as you can.

I am at a place in my life where the more like a cave I can make my surroundings, the happier I am.

I seem to get the best work when I'm angry and depressed and alienated.

It usually happens that I have multiple different projects going on at once, and one can be referencing the other.

A bands first albums usually not great. When you made the first album, you had a day job and you were still trying to be serious about it.

Poetry is an art of expressing the unknown music of our inner feelings and emotions in our known language.

You taste like heaven, and I’m going to prove it to you.

Well why don't you lean over this counter a little more and give me your best kiss, and then I'll tell you if I want you to take me out to dinner.

Entrepreneurs have two basic assets: their creativity and their relationships.

Anticipation leads the way to victory, and is the spur to conquest.

I think we need to treat everybody with dignity.

The difference between being a winner and being a loser is how you pick yourself up again, especially when you're down for the third or fourth or twentieth time!

I couldn’t see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.

How bless'd the heart that has a friend. A sympathizing ear to lend.

History is only a tiresome repetition of one story. Persons and classes have sought to win possession of the power of the State in order to live luxuriously out of the earnings of others