Songs came first. I started out in 1965 trying to copy the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Stones, like most kids I knew. I'm still trying. Songs are hard to beat.

I wanted to be a poet and/or an artist, but I was very lazy (frightened of failure, I guess) and drank too much.

I remember Bob Dylan saying in an interview that at a certain point he'd had to learn to do consciously what he'd previously done unconsciously or automatically. That resonates.

One of the beauties of working in radio is the way a whole setting can be richly evoked simply by the addition to the track of a little birdsong and a church bell in the distance.

Some songs seem to achieve the quality of a geometric object - a ball, box, or cone - and I don't mess with 'em.

What you gain another will lose, for What is there is all there is. What you share another will have, for What is there is enough for all.

America is the most fertile ground of opportunity.

Nothing brings down walls as surely as acceptance.

I'd go to, like, six different schools in one year. We were on welfare, and my mom never ever worked.

My kitchen linoleum is so black and shiny that I waltz while I wait for the kettle to boil. This pleasure is for the old who live alone.

Lack of love for the vegetative, subtle, cthonic, pagan, and sexy aspect of the world means death.

Some things that are true are not very useful.

It's nice to have material things but they're very superficial aren't they?

What is a college? An institute of learning. What is a business? An institute of learning. Life, itself, is an institute of learning.

I became an American in 2006. It got me thinking about what is my America and what's my perception of America.