Quote

I'm always concerned about how our state looks.

New Jersey is the most poetic state: close enough to New York to be urban and cosmopolitan, far enough to be desirous and unsure; densely populated, but full of farms and woods, with the most deer of any state.

I'm actually forced to write about Michigan because as a native of that state it's the place I know best.

I like geography. I like to know where places are.

I missed that question on Alaska. I hear they want to make it a state now.

I don't want to look like Connecticut, no offense, I don't want to look like Oklahoma, I don't want to look like California. I want to be uniquely Texas. And that's not to diss anybody else.

In order to represent the state, you've got to be in the state.

The idea of the state is, or should be, a very limited, prescribed idea. The state looks after the defense of the realm, and other matters - raising revenue to pay for things which are for all of us, and so on. That idea has turned turtle now. The state isn't any longer perceived as an institution which exists to serve us.

There are lots of nations in the world or national peoples who don't yet have states. They're inside someone else's state and they want a state of their own.

'State' can be a word that is a noun or a verb or an adverb - it's kind of why I chose that title. It's not to confound the audience but to keep me from painting myself into a cul-de-sac in the early stages of making a record by having too high concept or having some really strict set of rules I have to adhere to.