The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.

Now when I was a boyMy daddy sat me on his kneeAnd he told meHe told me many thingsAnd he said soneThere's a lot of things in this worldYou're gonna have no use forAnd when you get blueAnd you've lost all your dreamsThere's nothin' like a campfireAnd a can of beans

There's only one reason why you write new songs: You get sick of the old songs. It's not that I didn't do anything during the time when I wrote no songs. I was creative, but in another way. I had ideas for songs and collected the ideas.

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.

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.

You just write and you don't try to make sense of it. You just put it down the way you got it.

I like vocal word stuff. But I don't always write with an instrument, I usually write a capella. It's more like drawing in the air with your fingers. It's closest to the choreography of a bee. You're freer.