Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

so much of the world is plunged in darkness and chaos...So ring the bells that still can ringForget your perfect offeringThere is a crack in everythingThat’s how the light gets in.

I write to murder the selves that whisper untruths to me.

People used to say my music was too difficult or too obscure, and I never set out to be difficult or obscure. I just set out to write what I felt as honestly as I could, and I am delighted when other people feel a part of themselves in the music.

We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it's very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to what?

I don't think you can write novels on the road. You need a certain stability.

The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.

I didn't want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I write.

I feel that, you know, the enormous luck I've had in being able to make a living, and to never have had to have written one word that I didn't want to write, to be able to have satisfied that dictum I set for myself, which was not to work for pay, but to be paid for my work — just to be able to satisfy those standards that I set for myself has been an enormous privilege.