I wouldn't be interested in just doing a show that's mapped out and choreographed with a set list. That would've been boring so long ago it just wouldn't be any fun.

Folk-rock hasn't changed much over the decades since the Byrds started it.

You don't see a lot of difference between the Gin Blossoms and the Byrds.

There was just no way I could leave this little Martin guitar in my apartment overnight or even in the afternoon, and expect to find it there when I got back.

I've had an advantage; I've had a sort of open public acceptance in New York that doesn't happen to just anyone trying to make the transition you were talking about.

It's often said that life is strange. But compared to what?

I'm not trying to be the new anybody.

I relate to the audiences and they know me. It's pretty real.

I just play, and I'm always trying to write songs.

And the music, as far as a type of music, it's still pretty viable.

But I'm able to just keep going, and that's the challenge. It's the next song. And then just enjoying the shows and people who come out to the shows. It's pretty organic, really.

Liz Benedict, a teacher of mine at Iowa, is the person who introduced me to James Salter's work.

I kind of go in waves with reading. Sometimes I read all the time, and sometimes I can't get settled enough to focus.

More pernicious than the power of a dictator is that of a class; the most terrible - the tyranny of a majority.

Nowadays most people wear black most of the time anyway: go to a literary party and one would imagine everyone there was in perpetual mourning for their lives.

They truly mourn, that mourn without a witness.

In fact, I don't read newspapers any longer.

It is not where you start but how high you aim that matters for success.

That was my childhood. I grew up with the monks, studying Sanskrit and meditating for hours in the morning and hours in the evening, and going once a day to beg for food.

I tend to admire dead people more than the living. All too often, human reality diminishes the glowing reputation.

Less judgment than wit is more sail than ballast. Yet it must be confessed that wit given an edge to sense, and recommends it extremely.