Writing books is like looking at a giant stack of firewood that you to deal with piece by piece. With song writing, it's about waiting for something inspirational to come, and catching it before it's gone.

[At the release of The Decemberists album 'The King is Dead' (2011)] I've been enamoured with anglophile stuff for a while, so I think it kind of goes both ways. America and England have a really long history of just watching each other and then trying on whatever hat the other person is wearing, and often it looks very different being worn by the other. In some ways that strikes you as being inauthentic, but other times it works better. You could argue that the Rolling Stones did country rock better than some Americans, as well as Amy Winehouse and Dusty Springfield coming over and doing Memphis soul and succeeding in such a way that an American couldn't.