There are no bridges in folk songs because the peasants died building them.

I started using contact microphones that you can place on common, ordinary objects, like a rake. I put a microphone on it and it picked up the tines vibrating and turned it into a horrible din. What attracted me to it was the horrible din - that's what I really liked.

Sometimes you have trouble because someone 'likes' your music so much. They follow you around for hours singing little bits of the songs, or just freaking out.

I do the protest stuff. I do country and western. I play both acoustic and electric guitar in a lot of different styles, from loud, psychedelic stuff to quiet finger-picking.

When I first began to write fiction, I didn't think I was a comic writer; I thought I was a serious writer. I was surprised when the first novel I wrote was regarded as a funny novel.

I don't worship comedy; at the end of the day, I don't fall to the altar of comedy unquestioningly.

I'm a huge fan of French comedy. The French play comedy in a slightly different way than we do: they play it with a sort of realism that we don't necessarily often do ourselves.

I love the satire and skewering of comedy writing.