When I was growing up on our 53-acre dairy farm, we were obsessed with food; it was the center of our lives. We planted it, grew it, harvested it, peeled it, cooked it, served it, consumed it - endlessly, day after day, season after season.

I suppose the desire to go to town helped make me ambitious, and the allure of the worlds that came in over the radio also helped. But the rewards of growing up on a farm were far greater in many ways than life in town.

Rock and roll is about desire, about wanting something better. I think my characters all want something better. My understanding of the rock and roll dream is that a kid in an isolated place or a small town or an underprivileged world could transcend it somehow.

Some people will stay at home and be content there. Others are born to run. It's that conflict that fascinates me.

There's a really unique relationship between a single parent and their child. Marriages so easily break up. There's kind of this temporary deal about marriages. That's one of the things that makes it stressful, and that's something that's nonexistent in a parent-child relationship.

I don't think a camera and a cameraman can destroy a family.

My mother was a talker, but there are still so many things I want to ask her. She died when I was forty. But she did teach me to be a talker with my own children.

Nothing prepares a family for having multiple children at once.