You may not be able to hit all the notes. That's OK. You may not have the clearest tone. You may not have the greatest range. But if you can inhabit your song, you can communicate.

I was looking for some way to put my music to some service on a nightly basis. You go into a town, you play a little music, you leave something behind. That idea connected us to the local community. It was a very simple idea, but it really resonated with me.

I didn't know if it would be a successful one, or what the stages would be, but I always saw myself as a lifetime musician and songwriter...I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along...I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't...The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.

I think that, when you're writing your songs, there's always a debate about whether, is that you in the song? Is it not you in the song?

We gotta get out while we're young, 'cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run.

I believe when your children are born that you are reborn in some fashion.

In the third grade, a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that's where I belonged. I also had the distinction of being the only altar boy knocked down by a priest during mass.