I have learned to be steady in my course of love, or fear, or loneliness, rather than impulsive in its wasting, either lyrically or emotionally.

Sometimes the fragment of a conversation, the color of the sky, the image in a dream, has everything to do with where the song begins.

If I ignore my work, I start having anxiety attacks.

I don't do comparisons because I always lose.

I'm not the type to turn to drugs and alcohol, but I do have a profound devotion to art and music - and children.

We are creating a culture where content creators are a new servant class, and paid as such.

I think that my sensitivity to music has actually deepened and expanded as I've gotten older. You add more life experience.

I adhere to the religion of art and music and small children.

As John Adams said, all democracies will eventually self-destruct. We seem to be doing it very quickly.

I was a songwriter; that was the torch I carried. This is an honorable profession. This is what I do.

I gave up language for a while, and I started painting.And then I only listened to Miles Davis and other instrumental music to see how it felt to be without words.

I was sensitive to music and poetry, and it was around me growing up.

You stand in front of a great painting and your heart just opens and your mind expands about what's possible. That, to me, is a connection to what God is.

I think any young person who is going into the same field as their parent whose parent has been very successful, it's complicated.And it was complicated for me.

I wanted to be a songwriter.I didn't so much want to be a performer.I more grew into that just from being a songwriter.

I wanted to be the writer in the room setting depth charges of feeling out the world with my language.You know, I had a very romantic idea about that.But I grew into being a performer.

Yeah, I was in the phase for the last ten years or so where every record I made I said OK, that's the last one, I don't want to record anymore, I don't want to do this any more, I don't want to have a public life.

Once your kids get older and get out of the house, it's not like it stops. They're on the phone with me every day; I'm intimately involved in their problems.

For me, art is a more trustworthy expression of God than religion.

Loss is the great unifier, the terrible club to which we all eventually belong.

But there's nothing that gives me more thrill than when I'm writing and a couplet works. I find the right rhyme, or it's just perfect. There's nothing that exciting.

Being in the studio is like painting, you know, you can really take your time, and try different things, and kind of go deep into it.

And I kind of said to myself if I get my voice back I'm not going to take back the old anxiety about it and just focus on the limitations. I'm really going to enjoy it.

Well, the first year I lost my voice I didn't mind so much because I was going to have a baby and I was distracted with him anyway, I didn't even think about it that much, well, OK, this is what's happening.