“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.”

I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We’re all looking at the wrapping. But we won’t tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath.

The trick is to have a career and have a family. It’s like having two dogs that hate each other and you have to take them for a walk every night.

I started out with nothing and I still got most of it left.

People get frightened that success is going to take them out of life. They’re no longer going to be on the corner of Bedlam and Squalor; life will only be something you can get through the mail.

There’s no prayer like desire.

Oh, I’m not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.

The beginning of it starts at the end.

Don’t you know there ain’t no devil, it’s just god when he’s drunk.

You got to tell me the brave captain Why are the wicked so strong? How do the angels get to sleep When the devil leaves the porch light on?

I’ve lost my equilibrium, my car keys, and my pride.

I’ve seen it all through the yellow windows of the evening train.

You’re my North Star when I’m lost and feeling blue.

I don’t like the stigma that comes with being called a poet. So I call what I’m doing an improvisational adventure or an inebriational travelogue.

Break windows, smoke cigars, and stay up late. Tell ’em to do that, they’ll find a little pot of gold.

Sing me a rainbow. Steal me a dream.

I don’t go to church on Sunday, don’t get on my knees to pray, or memorize the books of the Bible, I got my own special way

I continue to form a column. If the column contains about twenty of these couples of metal, it will be capable of giving to the fingers several small shocks.

Don’t use your brain to play it, let your feelings guide your fingers.

I continue coupling a plate of silver with one of zinc, and always in the same order, and place between each of these couples a moistened disk. I continue to form a column. If the column contains about twenty of these couples of metal, it will be capable of giving to the fingers several small shocks.

The only thing that it is advisable to know in any language is the numerals; and even there, you can do a lot with the fingers.

My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.

Tracing my fingertips over these open wounds that you carelessly open up, just to be amused; You pick at my sorrow while all I do is care for you.

Every honest miller has a golden thumb.

I’d rather be more of the hippie country chick – as in, instead of pointing a finger, just maybe saying, ‘We’re all screw-ups. We’re all in this kind of together. We’re all just figuring this out.’