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" I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox. "

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" I didn't really want to be part of a clique or a niche. But I also was looking for my own voice, as a writer, y'know? And a world I could call my own. "

" When you're writing, you're conjuring. It's a ritual, and you need to be brave and respectful and sometimes get out of the way of whatever it is that you're inviting into the room. "

" The piano has been drinking, not me. "

" I bark my voice out through a closed throat, pretty much. It's more, perhaps, like a dog in some ways. It does have its limitations, but I'm learning different ways to keep it alive. "

" But then I'm one of those guys that is still a bit afraid of the telephone, its implications for conversation. I still wonder if the jukebox might be the death of live music. "

" I'm just trying to make a buck like everyone else. "

" I saw a crow building a nest, I was watching him very carefully, I was kind of stalking him and he was aware of it. And you know what they do when they become aware of someone stalking them when they build a nest, which is a very vulnerable place to be? They build a decoy nest. It's just for you. "

" Most songs have meager beginnings. You wake up in the morning, you throw on your suspenders, and you subvocalize and just think. They seem to form like calcium. I can't think of a story right off the bat that was that interesting. I write things on the back of my hand, usually, and sing into a tape recorder. "

" I used to imagine that making it in music - really making it in music - is if you're an old man going by a schoolyard and you hear children singing your songs, playing jump-rope, or on the swings. That's the ultimate. You're in the culture. "

" I'm one of those guys that is still a bit afraid of the telephone, its implications for conversation. I still wonder if the jukebox might be the death of live music. "

" I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We're all looking at the wrapping. But we won't tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath. "

" What you want is for music to love you back. That's why you pay your dues. You want to feel like you belong and are part of this symbiosis, metamorphosis, whatever you want to call it. "

" I don't know if any genuine, meaningful change could ever result from a song. It's kind of like throwing peanuts at a gorilla. "

" George Bush is a fan of mine, he came to see me in the Seventies. His coke dealer brought him. "

" You almost have to create situations in order to write about them, so I live in a constant state of self-imposed poverty. I don't want to live any other way. "

" My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. "

" I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy. "

" Oh, I got a beautiful 1959 Cadillac Coupe DeVille four-door. No one will ride in it with me. "

" If you're a writer, you know that the stories don't come to you - you have to go looking for them. The old men in the lobby: that's where the stories were. "

" When you're a kid and you're trying to find your own voice, it's rather daunting to hear somebody like Howlin' Wolf, because you know that you'll never achieve that. "

" I have an audio stigmatism whereby I hear things wrong - I have audio illusions. "

" I don't like listening to records a lot after they're done. There's just no real nourishment there for me. "

" For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too. "

" There's not much difference between what I appear to be on stage and what I am. I think people like that, that I'm not trying to pull a caper. "

" Some day I'm gonna be gone and people will be listening to my songs and conjuring me up. In order for that to happen, you gotta put something of yourself in it. "

" If you are recording, you are recording. I don't believe there is such a thing as a demo or a temporary vocal. "

" Don't look back, because someone might be gaining on you. "

" If you record the sound of bacon in a frying pan and play it back, it sounds like the pops and cracks on an old 33 1/3 recording. Almost exactly like that. You could substitute it for that sound. "

" You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone. "

" If you are making a record, you are the one saying 'action', and you are the one saying 'cut,' and you have to be sure that the most interesting thing is not going on outside the frame. "