I was writing poetry, and the Mountain Goats was an outgrowth of that.

Good things never last, bad things never die.

My father would tell me if I wasn't writing in meter verse, it wasn't poetry.

At my high school, there were always kids carrying acoustic guitars around, which is why I named my band the Mountain Goats. I didn't want to seem like one of those guys who brought his guitar to the party whether you asked him to or not.

I think all writing is necessarily autobiographical to a greater or lesser extent, and the less it tries to be confessional, the more likely it is that you're somehow sneaking the things you need to say in there.

If you had too many elk, deer and mountain goats in a given unit, they eat the vegetation and they would actually destroy their own habitat if we allowed them to grow without check.