The most precious research to me came from the paperwork filed on behalf of my grandparents and great-grandfather. The ship's manifest showed that they could read and write. I am still emotional when I look at those boxes checked yes.
I only write to understand myself better... I don't try to show how intelligent or how cultivated I am, I just try to share my soul. Sharing is part of life.
I doubt I'll be singing forever, because at some point people aren't going to want to hear my music, and I hope that I'll still get the opportunity to write songs.
Experience of life (not of books) is the only capital usable in such a book as you have attempted; one can make no judicious use of this capital while it is new.
Who is he that shall control me? Why may not I act and speak and write and think with entire freedom? What am I to the universe, or, the unvierse, what is it to me? Who hath forged the chains of wrong and right, of Opinion and Custom? And must I wear them?
I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.
What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness.
Our resources may be finite, but our will is infinite, and I am confident that if we come together and summon that great American spirit once again, we will meet the challenges of our time and write the next great chapter in our American story.
Most writers - poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes.
It was a compromise. There was a sense that I could write my own memoirs, and Larry [Grobel] would help me down the line, or maybe not, maybe he was too close to me.
I couldn't write a song to save my life. I wouldn't say that I started to panic, but I was definitely getting frustrated. I couldn't even cross a t or dot an i.