My father would tell me if I wasn't writing in meter verse, it wasn't poetry.

I was writing poetry, and the Mountain Goats was an outgrowth of that.

I got a promo of 'Nichts Muss' in what would have been 2002 or 2003 and fell totally in love with it after listening to it on an airplane that took me to Australia via Taipei and Kuala Lumpur.

I always assumed people wanted to hear me tell stories, but then I had 'The Sunset Tree.' It turned out, my own stories were the ones that registered with people the hardest.

Be careful, darling. Your footsteps land heavy here. Your racket will wake the dragons.

You trip over a word while carrying
a tray of vocabulary out to the pool
only to discover that broken glass
is a good topic.