I told my father I wanted to play the banjo, and so he saved the money and got ready to give me a banjo for my next birthday, and between that time and my birthday, I lost interest in the banjo and was playing guitar.

When I really started liking music was when I could play some of it myself, and after a couple of years of playing folk music, I kinda rediscovered those hits that were on the radio all the time when I was a kid.

Very often it's really inconvenient - who you fall in love with. You can't really control it.

So I had a couple of years of playing trumpet. I really enjoyed it, but it was not the kind of instrument you could whip out at a party. Let's face it.

I'm a big fan of British journalists like 'The Independent”s Robert Fisk, but it's hard to find voices like his in the U.S.

I want to know what became of the changes we waited for love to bring/Were they only the fitful dreams of some greater awakening?

Self-discovery in songwriting, bringing something forth that's instructive to yourself - some of the best songs that you will ever write are the ones where you didn't have to think about any of that stuff, but nonetheless that's what's happening in the song.