No failure in America, whether of love or money, is ever simple; it is always a kind of betrayal, of a mass of shadowy, shared hopes.

I learned that when something just has to be said to move the discussion along, or broaden it or deepen it, if I can just keep my mouth shut for five minutes a student will say it. So for me a lot of teaching is about keeping my mouth shut.

Listening is like running down a mountain on a switchback trail, the sound of surprise generating its own momentum. There’s a punk glee inside the bluegrass craft–and a punk vehemence inside the bluegrass smile.

Elvis' early music has drama because as he sang he was escaping limits.

I want another idea, another project, but you can't make them up. They show up.

It may be that the most interesting American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and then to learn something of the value of those limits

What’s the impulse behind art? It’s saying in whatever language is the language of your work, “If I could move you as much as it moved me … if I can move anyone a tenth as much as that moved me, if I can spark the same sense of mystery and awe and surprise as that sparked in me, well that’s why I do what I do.”