Every day on Earth is another chance to get it right.
I don't believe that songwriting has to be profound, but I truly believe that it's a crime for you to go outta your way for it not to be.
I have a low tolerance for mediocrity in music and life. I'm into pain and joy and the in-between doesn't interest me.
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.
What's important is you wake up in the morning and something doesn't exist, and when you finish you day's work something is in the world that wasn't there before.
If I can get Me out of the way, I can do anything.
To me, religion is an agreement between a group of people about what God is. Spirituality is a one-on-one relationship.
I'm not a racist, but I do have to work at not being a racist, because of where I grew up.
Woody Guthrie was what folks who don't believe in anything would call an anomaly.
All we do as songwriters is rewrite the songs that have impressed us till we find our own voice. It's part of learning the craft.
I don't really think in terms of obstacles. My biggest obstacle is always myself.
You see things differently at 40 than you do at 31. Especially if you got to 40 the way I did.
Like most kids, I grew up singing 'This Land Is Your Land' in grammar school, but with the most radical verses neatly removed. This was before I knew it was a Woody Guthrie song.
The reason music became so powerful to our generation is that it's art you can consume in your car, and we were driving around a lot.
I have no doubt in mind that I justify the space I take up in the world.
I do not believe Tony Blair was a fundamentally good man who went bad. I believe he was evil in the first place.
I have a theory that the people who cook in jails are British chefs.
My therapist says that I choose women that I couldn't possibly succeed in a relationship with because I really want to be alone. Which sounds complicated and convoluted to me, but I don't know. Maybe she's right. There's a part of me that wants that.
America's criminal justice system isn't known for rehabilitation. I'm not sure that, as a society, we are even interested in that concept anymore.
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.
I don't care what's happening in the mainstream of country music. I haven't in a long time.
Bob Dylan is one of the very few people in the history of popular music who you can unquestionably apply that word [genius] to.
People hate good books to be over. I wish I could write a 700-page book.
I don't separate writing songs from poetry and short fiction. In the area where I work in my house, there's a word processor and a guitar.
Critics are notoriously liberal with their use of the term 'genius'.
