The first splurge of creativity is kind of free, and the last 30 percent is painstakingly hard work, but it's good to light a fire and make it public and create that expectation. It's become part of the writing process, really, a way to ask the audience what they think, how they think it's going. I can't write songs in a vacuum.

You can build up expectations for a song before you record it, and then it's like nothing's good enough in the studio.

The problem is, when you're working with orchestras, you only get the orchestra for about two hours before the performance to pull it all together, and that doesn't sound like a real collaboration.

It's not set in stone. I like to keep it rolling and changing, and so I am like, "Great, I get to remake my song."

I think life is a wondrous thing. I'm happy to try pretty hard.

There's been this perception that Europeans still hold on to, that they discover the real talented ones in American culture and give them proper credit and that's not true anymore - it used to be. A lot of jazz musicians would get respect in Europe.

With the words, a lot of things start with questions. Some word kind of piques my interest, and I love the way it sounds, but I really don't know what it means. And I honestly don't care for a while.