Van Dyke Parks quotes:

To make a collaboration succeed there can be no visible contusions or abrasions. For the collaboration to succeed, the relationship must be nourished and survive. That is absolutely essential for a collaboration to succeed.

I think that smoking is a very good thing to do -- it's got the association with the Indians; it's a peaceable thing. But like much else that the Indians gave us, we abused the privilege. And so, in my case I must simply stop. I'm too old to smoke. But I do believe that nicotine provides a great creative thrust....

The older I get, the better I was.

Well, to me, the tensile strength and the very definition of an artist is something that I would place at the top of a vertical hierarchy. To be an artist is to suffer and to lead a life without shelter. It takes a great amount of daring-do, self reinvention, imagination, familial loyalty, sacrifice, economic uncertainty, and the right to be wrong, the right to fail in order to achieve something of noticeable value.

You know, any sane magician would never reveal his method of deception. And I don't think that a sensible musician would either.