While we can remember the past we cannot write the future. Only our children the future of our community can do that.

I feel like I write songs for the future or something. Not in an arrogant way but I feel like maybe my songs were like before their time or something.

Frontiersmen good and bad gunmen as well as inspired prophets of the future have been my camp companions. Thus I know the country of which I am about to write as few men now living have known it.

I don't write literary fiction - I write books that are entertaining but are also I hope well-constructed and thoughtful and funny and have things to say about men and women and families and children and life in America today.

I have no agenda except to be funny. Neither I or the writers profess to offer any worldly wisdom.

When I was younger I wanted to be a big movie star who'd get to be funny on talk shows and then I wanted to retire and write science fiction.

Movies don't look hard but figuring it out getting the shape of it getting everybody's character right and having it be funny make sense and be romantic it's creating a puzzle. Yes having been a writer for so long I have an awareness of when things are going awry but it doesn't mean I know how to fix them.

It's funny in a way the actor is a writer. It's not like the two things are so separate as to be like apples and oranges. The writer and the actor are one.

And I think that being able to make people laugh and write a book that's funny makes the information go down a lot easier and it makes it a lot more fun to read easier to understand and often stronger. So there's all kinds of advantages to it.

I remember listening to the radio as a kid and finding that the songs always made me feel more peaceful. Funny but the more hurtin' the music was the better it made me feel. I think of that now when I write my songs. I may not be feelin' the blues myself but I'm writing them for other people who have a hard life.