My mother's a singer and my mother's father is a singer, and everyone on both sides are all country-western bluegrass musicians.

Privilege and complacency paralyze me with fear sometimes. But the less vulnerable we are because of privilege, the country we're born in, or the security we enjoy, the more vulnerable our souls are to apathy.

Bear the burdens of others, but don't put them in your pocket too.

So much of the way a singer physically damages their voice could be caused by stress or nerves. I would never be so brazen as to assume that it's the only problem but there's got to be a reason that a martial artist can harness enough peace to smash his head through a cinder block without leaving a scratch.

I hope that somewhere in Small Town, U.S.A., a 15-year-old kid looks to me as a role model the way I looked at the Indigo Girls and Elton John as role models.

I've read and heard that some of the most inspiring vocal interpreters adhere habitually to one rule: Always think the lyrics as you're singing them, so that the sentiment is always appropriate and heartfelt.

In life, I'm most inspired by entertaining people and driven by the desire to do it by such a powerful force that I think it influences everything I do.