Interviewer: You sing a lot about summers and autumns.
Ray Davies: I like autumn things. I did a record called "Autumn Almanac" - I drew pictures of it and everything. After I wrote it, for a whole month I was thinking about it. I wasted a lot time, really, because I was sweeping up dead leaves and putting them in the sack. I'm susceptible to that sort of thing - to walls and flowers. You can probably get something more from a wall than a person sometimes. It's just put somewhere. It's just put somewhere. It's in line, in order, it's in line with horizon. Ah, ridiculous. What I try to do probably doesn't come out. What I've worked out what I do - I might not be right - is to do something very personal, and then suddenly I look at it, up in the air. I blow it up and look at it and then I come down again - a better man. I was in a lift in New York City and wanted to go to the 50th floor. A woman came in and wanted to go to the basement and I said I was here first, I want the 50th floor, and she said, "Sue me". Great. I accepted it...
Interviewer: Sometimes they shoot you.
Ray Davies: In England they just let you live (laughter). That's the best way to die. The deadest way... Grayness is beauty in boredom.
Interviewer: How do you go about writing?
Ray Davies: Everything has been thrown at me, paperboats float past me, but something more direct might hit me and leave its mark. I think the things I write about are the things I can't fight off. There are a lot of things I say that are really common-place. I can't get rid of them. I go into something one minute, then look at it, then go back into it.

Jonathan Cott, Rolling Stone, Nov. 10, 1969