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I was pretty strict in high school about who I would listen to. Musicians like Neil Young, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell... who were, in my opinion, great writers. The music mattered, but it held hands with the lyrics, and the personality was, overall, unsullied.

I've always been around musicians and always been the songwriter who doesn't end up playing the music.

I've always wanted to make music like people write plays, so I was inspired by writers as much as musicians.

I was one of those guys, you know, playing and singing, and there was no reason for me to write a song, because there were so many beautiful songs out. And Bob Dylan was always the ultimate songwriter, and nobody could ever write a song as good as him, and nobody ever has written a song as good as him.

Had I not become entangled with music, I would have become an author much earlier.

I still feel the impulse to give young writers a hearing, and I believe I have played more unpublished compositions than any other band leader in the country.

My grandfather was not a musician but he was an artist - a painter, a decorative painter.

I'm not musically inclined. It blows my mind that people can write music. I don't have that talent; I look up to the people that do.

All of the musicians when I was young used to always say you had to tell a story when you're a musician.