I’m a little young for retirement.
Americans have decided to be stupid and shallow since 1980.
Once I got the open tunings for some reason, I began to get the harmonic sophistication that I heard that my musical fountain inside was excited by. Once I got some interesting chords to play with, my writing began to come.
To enjoy my music, you need depth and emotionality.
Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.
I never loved a man as far as I could pitch my shoe.
Because I’m so busy and because I think of myself as a painter, I desperately guard the time that I have to paint. And sometimes I’m irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep.
It’s in my stars to invent; I was born on Madame Curie’s birthday. I have this need for originals, for innovation. That’s why I like Charlie Parker.
I don’t like being too looked up at or too looked down on. I prefer meeting in the middle to being worshipped or spat out.
You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it’s just complaining.
I have an aversion to being mislabeled. Here’s a label I’d accept: I’m an ‘individual.’ I’m someone who can’t follow, and doesn’t want to lead.
Won’t you stay We’ll put on the day And we’ll talk in present tenses.
Just before our love got lost you said “I am as constant as a northern star” And I said, constantly in the darkness, Where’s that at? If you want me I’ll be in the bar.
Abstract Expressionism was invented by New York drunks.
Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels The dizzy dancing way you feel As every fairy tale comes real I’ve looked at love that way.
My husband had an education. He had a degree in Literature. I married into a camp of literary types.
I could drink a case of you.
All the news of home you read, more about the war and of bloody changes.
I am as constant as a northern star.
Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees, please.