Mark Lanegan

My favorite record, growing up, was 'Songs of the Haunted House,' a Disney record that was just wackiness. It's still one of my favorites, actually.

I hope I'm learning until I'm dead.

I was never super comfortable playing music in front of people anyway. Now I enjoy it, but it wasn't the easiest thing to get past.

I was in Screaming Trees - I wasn't really interested in playing quiet music in a live setting. But I would get asked quite often to do a show or open for somebody, and I always said no. Finally, I was asked if I would open for Johnny Cash, and Johnny Cash was one of my dad's favorite heroes. So that's why I started doing solo shows.

Nobody likes to believe that they need anybody's help in anything, and the smarter you are - and I'm not smart - or the tougher you are - and at times I thought I was pretty tough - the more trouble you have.

I was excited when the Afghan Whigs got back together.

I was in trouble with the law from when I was real young.

The Warriors team with Baron Davis, Matt Barnes, Stephen Jackson - that was an incredible team.

I was listening to punk rock in the '70s as a young kid, but all by myself; I never met anyone that listened to that kind of music. Just by chance, I was in detention, and one of the guys in the class was Van Conner... I started talking to him and found out that we listened to some of the same music.

When I was a kid in the late '60s and early '70s, my parents and their friends would play the records of Andy Williams, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Perry Como, music with string arrangements and men singing songs that sounded sad whether they were or not.

I worked as a breakfast cook in a lot of different restaurants.

I think there's something therapeutic in singing about anything, whether it's what you've written or whether it's someone else's song. I find both satisfying in different ways.