I've never known of Wal-Mart to be a good neighbor in any town it's ever moved into.

I've never made a record that I'm ashamed of.

If there is such a thing as a workaholic, I'm it, and that's what passes for leisure.

It amazes me that the most Christian funerals are the most barbaric funeral rites of passage that are celebrated anywhere in the world.

Making art in America is sort of a political statement in and of itself. It's not the best environment for that sometimes.

Me, I'm spiritually retarded, I need to be knee deep in water with a fly rod in my hands, that's about as close to God as I get.

Music was very influential on me as a kid.

My audience is, you know, pinkos in big cities.

My dad was in a wheelchair and on oxygen for the last few years of his life.

My politics were really radical when I was younger, and then I moderated like everyone else does when they start having kids.

My spiritual system is 12-step programs. That's the only one I've ever had. I didn't have one before that.

New Orleans is a unique environment.

Poetry is the hardest thing that there is. It fascinates me, so I want to write more of it.

Sonnets are guys writing in English, imitating an Italian song form. It was a form definitely sung as often as it was recited.

Sympathetic characters usually have a voice. They usually don't have any trouble being heard.

The creative core of New York has never been native New Yorkers; it's people from all over the world.

There's a long tradition of people from the South living in New York City.

To me, religion is an agreement between a group of people about what God is. Spirituality is a one-on-one relationship.

Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.

Truman Capote is really an interesting cat.