If you don't connect yourself to your family and to the world in some fashion, through your job or whatever it is you do, you feel like you're disappearing, you feel like you're fading away, you know? I felt like that for a very very long time. Growing up, I felt like that a lot. I was just invisible; an invisible person. I think that feeling, wherever it appears, and I grew up around people who felt that way, it's an enormous source of pain; the struggle to make yourself felt and visible. To have some impact, and to create meaning for yourself, and for the people you come in touch with.

I don't write demographically. I don't write a song to reach these people or those people.

More than rich, more than famous, more than happy...I wanted to be great.

I never start with a political point of view. I believe that your politics are emotionally and psychologically determined by your early experiences.

I think life goes through a cycle of losing and refinding yourself all the time. Everyone has disappointments all the time, some of them pretty small, some of them pretty big.

What you were singing about was believable and convincing, that's the key to a great singer.

You can't shut off the risk and the pain without losing the love that remains.