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I try to write lyrics so that they won't age, which sort of leaves you with the big subjects like death and love and sex and violence.

Everyone is trying to make these huge songs; I just make things that I want to listen to. Music that I will be comfortable listening to 10 years from now, that's my only thing.

I sometimes don't know what songs are about for several years after I've written them.

That's what I find with any good song, you just have to let it happen. Out of about twenty songs you might write, one of any significance. It might be thirty or forty, but I just keep churning them out and churning them out in hope that one of them will stick.

I basically had the idea when I was 18 that I wanted to write my own songs. I knew it was going to be a long, tough road, and I was like, if I just begin now, by the time I'm 40, I'll be good at it.

Just this morning, out of a large memory for songs, and having been obsessed by them since childhood, suddenly, at the age of 84, I thought of a song I hadn't thought of in over 50 years. It came into my head unbidden.

If I like a song, I'll just keep playing it, and it never gets old.

I'm getting bored performing the same songs over and over. Songwriting comes and goes.

The bottom line is, I tend to be going back to older and older music.

I've been gearing up for this future of writing a lot of new music by digging into my favorite old stuff, and twisting it around and highlighting the things I really love.