The school was prone to dishing out punishments for anything creative that didn't fit with expectation - I just followed the logic and figured the folk club was probably much the same.

My faith, inasmuch as I have any, is more like a kind of Joseph Campbell thing, and even that frequently finds itself tested to oblivion in siren waters.

In some ways it's taken me decades to come clean and make honest work - and still to this day, sometimes I find myself wanting to hide behind my work and deny the more biographical aspects.

So why sign your name in blood for more? It seemed like a sensible arrangement for me. I didn't sell large numbers of records and the record company paid advances they rarely recouped.

I feel like I'm stepping into a place of spiritual contemplation every time I enter a studio; it's always had a certain magic to me that has never worn off with familiarity.

I didn't really escape that gravity until I moved 300 miles south to go to college at 18, where authorship no longer seemed something liable to induce vengeful punishment.

If you feel driven and compelled to make your work and to be fiercely original and have something unique to say, in a compelling way, then chances are the helpers will be there for you the doors will open some, the ice will crack.

Now I'm having to live with sales of around 50,000 per album - but I'm pretty content with my place in the general scheme of things, even if it's meant I don't drive a fancy car and can't afford grand vacations.

I don't know to what extent someone can BECOME an artist - you either are or you aren't - and if you are you'll HAVE to make your way to some kind of sickly light, no matter how terrible the soil you were seeded in your nature will out somehow.

I've been getting pretty focused about that recently, and even considered doing a masters degree to polish up the craft. I've been pretty lucky in that I seem to have found people online who are willing to constructively tear it apart for me, and indicate its weaknesses.

Whatever the opposite of regret is best describes how I've always felt about that decision - it opened me up to a million creative opportunities I needed to experience away from the bull and distorting mirrors that fame engenders.

I'd make a terrible practitioner of any religion in any formal setting.

I took the process of doing as much myself as I could like a duck to water. I set up my own label and publishing, etc, and it was a fun learning curve two decades ago.

Trust the tale, not the teller.

There's nothing like doing something wrong to learn how it might be done better.

I always liked the magic of poetry but now I'm just starting to see behind the curtain of even the best poets, how they've used, tried and tested craft to create the illusion. Wonderful feeling of exhilaration to finally be there.

Oh yeah - for sure - hardly a week doesn't go by when I don't hear something wonderful that someone has made in some low-budget situation, primarily with a view to selling a few hundred copies at their concerts.

The school was prone to dishing out punishments for anything creative that didn't fit with expectation - I just followed the logic and figured the folk club was probably much the same.

Now that I'm staring down the barrel of the last act of my life, I'm less excited about control and solo effort, and I resent the way the business aspects interfere with my space for creative writing.

Make it a habit to tell people thank you. To express your appreciation, sincerely and without the expectation of anything in return. Truly appreciate those around you, and you'll soon find many others around you. Truly appreciate life, and you'll find that you have more of it.

Until the last great war, a general expectation of material improvement was an idea peculiar to Western man. Now war and its aftermath have made economic and social progress a political imperative in every quarter of the globe.

In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.

But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.

I was always surrounded by expectation from the very first race I ran as a 5-year-old.

I also want to draw attention to the responsibilities that people have to live up to their election promises and to live up to the votes that were cast by the people of Wales, in the General Election, in the expectation that we would deliver this promise.

Where is the expectation of privacy in the commission of a crime?

I believe that this is not only the view of the people on both sides of the Strait. It is also the common expectation of the US, Japan and the international community.

We will always tend to fulfill our own expectation of ourselves.

A public expectation, it has to be said, not of poetry as such but of political positions variously approvable by mutually disapproving groups.

There is no greater challenge than to have someone relying upon you; no greater satisfaction than to vindicate his expectation.

A desert is a place without expectation.

Life is largely a matter of expectation.

An expectation is a future object, recognised as belonging to me.

A youthful mind is seldom totally free from ambition; to curb that, is the first step to contentment, since to diminish expectation is to increase enjoyment.

When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens.

Kids will reach whatever expectation you set for them.

Death, after all, is the common expectation from birth. Neither heroes nor cowards can escape it.

I had no expectation that the Prince would offer me the unprecedented and unfettered access to the original and entirely untapped sources on which this biography is based.

Expectation is the root of all heartache.

Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave nether room nor demand for a theory of probabilities.

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

To compete in a global economy, our students must continue their education beyond high school. To make this expectation a reality, we must give students the tools they need to succeed, including the opportunity to take a college entrance exam.

I think ultimately if you have a very high expectation of your audience and you know exactly what it is you're trying to express through the medium of film, there will always be an audience for you.

There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow.

Our top priority is our troops, who are making the extraordinary effort to fulfill the mission they have been given. Democrats will work with this Administration to better define that mission and a realistic expectation of success in Iraq.

Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing.

The curse of the romantic is a greed for dreams, an intensity of expectation that, in the end, diminishes the reality.