"...You can imagine that you're in a park after it's just snowed, and it's January, and it's Sunday, and it's about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and the sun is out. So when the sun is out in a day like one of those days, it's not usually a very cheery, happy, golden sunlight that comes out on a day like that. Usually - this has been my experience - it tends to be a very pale, white kind of watery kind of sun. So let's say it's a day like that and you're feeling a little... peculiar, you might sing a song like this one..."
In concert: Iron Horse, Northampton, MA, USA, May 17, 1984

Deep Freeze is written with capitals in the lyrics, Suzanne explains the concept:
"My worst fear is to be frozen, and I mean it in a physical way and also a spiritual way. When I was a child I used to have this state that I would call "hitting the Deep Freeze", which meant that I was paralysed and I couldn't move. That's what I'm most afraid of, I think, and that comes out a lot in the songs."
Interview with Fátima Castro Silva in "Urgent Whispers" (http://watermarks.vega.net/urgent_whispers/index.htm)

Suzanne on the tone of her voice in "Cracking":
"Cracking is very hard to sing, because the tendency is to overdo it. It's a song about a person who's walking through the park having a mild nervous breakdown..."
Interview in Folk Roots, July 1986, No. 36

"With "Cracking" I knew that the title came first, and after that I would try different lines and it just wasn't working, and sometimes it will take months for the thing to line up correctly until it seems to fall right in the right place."
Interview with Paul Zollo in Song Talk, Vol. 2, #16, Winter 1991, also published in "Language", 5:1 August 1992, (http://www.vega.net/songtal1.htm) trancription by Steve Zwanger

"You look at a song like "Cracking," and you hear the line "my heart is broken," so you think, "oh, she had a fight with her boyfriend," but it's not what I had in mind at all. Actually, what I think a lot of the songs are about on the first album are more of identity - of a person finding their way in the world. I was thinking about this a lot because I think a person's heart can be broken in by a lot of things, not just romantic. You can be crushed by your circumstances. The person walking through the park could be anyone. It could be someone who's just lost their job. It could be someone who's feeling just suppressed by their circumstances in general, which is more what I had in mind. "
Generation Magazine, December 9 1986, Suzanne Vega Interview by Allan Rousselle

"Cracking is the oldest [on the debut album - ed.]: I wrote it in 1980. And I wrote it to be spoken rather than sung, because the character, who's kind of 'cracking up,' wouldn't sing about her problems. It's as though you're having lunch with someone and she's talking about something in a very detached voice and suddenly you realize she's not making sense."
High Times Magazine, December 9 1986, Suzanne Vega: New Age Folkie by Kathrine Dieckmann

"When I wrote "Cracking," for example, I thought, I really want to write a song called "Cracking." All I had was the title, and I wanted to write it from the point of view of a woman who was cracking, but I didn't want to stand on stage and say, "Oh my God, I'm falling apart!" Instead I wanted to describe a landscape that was like a woman's inner state, and to me it was very exciting to come up with the idea of having her say, And something is cracking, I don't know where, because it was obvious that she was cracking." The Cutting Edge of Folk from Bullet In Flight, originally published in Clockwatch Review Volume 4, No. 2, 7-14-87/8-9-87 by Ronald J. Rindo and James Plath http://www.suzannevega.com/about/1987/clockwatch.htm