"Someday we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny."

"When it comes to luck, you make your own."

"I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream."

"Getting an audience is hard. Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time."

"I looked at myself, and I just said, 'Well, you know, I can sing, but I'm not the greatest singer in the world. I can play guitar very well, but I'm not the greatest guitar player in the world.' So I said, 'Well, if I'm going to project an individuality, it's going to have to be in my writing.'"

"The past is never the past. It is always present. And you better reckon with it in your life and in your daily experience, or it will get you. It will get you really bad."

"We all have stories we're living and telling ourselves."

"Adult life is dealing with an enormous amount of questions that don't have answers. So I let the mystery settle into my music. I don't deny anything, I don't advocate anything, I just live with it."

"You can't have a United States if you are telling some folks that they can't get on the train. There is a cracking point where a society collapses."