I'm trying to break any chain of negative parenting that I might have survived.

You can't be perfect. You can't be the perfect father. You can't be the perfect singer.

If I'm not on tour or in the studio, I'm in nature somewhere, usually some kind of ocean. Playing music has afforded me that. It's not lost on me that it's a tremendous opportunity to be able to spend your life being surrounded by nature.

I was living on the wrong side of the tracks in Evanston, Illinois, in a home for boys. We had these Jackson 5 records. I really related to their voices - they were about my age, but they were doing it.

I didn't respond to the kind of sarcastic tone. It felt like some of the Sarah Palin speech was written as though it were a Saturday Night Live newscast. Maybe that's because she looks very similar . . . She's got her Tina Fey thing going.

I would thank God, but I don't believe in it... It's like a movie that was way too popular. It's a story that's been told too many times and just doesn't mean anything... All I really believe in is this moment, like right now.

I've stepped back a few times and had these crazy epiphanies that we are blessed by having Barack Obama as a candidate at this time in our history. If we were ever to have a man of color become president - and it shouldn't be about that, and it doesn't need to be, because he's qualified on all levels - but if you do think about it, just in terms of that idea of unifying people, it's a huge positive.