There is a thing that happens when you are not as privileged and you start hanging out with a seedier crowd because you can afford to do the same things, And all of a sudden the big night out is sitting in somebody's trailer, smoking something or getting hold of something to put up to your nose.

Delight, Delight, Delight...in our youth.

I knew all the rules but the rules did not know me.

I probably get strangers coming up to me two or three times a week to just say something nice.

So my one kid's 4, my other kid's 4 months, I'm 44, Barack Obama is the 44th president - it's all lining up nicely here.

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.

I don't work so hard at trying to get every song to be three-dimensional and mean so much. I just want to breathe, right now, with the music.