I started playing the trumpet when I was about eight.

My forays into trying to date girls my own age from the school I went to were all pretty tortured.

I grew up reading Shakespeare and Mark Twain.

Oh Lord, are there really people starving still?

Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels. Looking back at the years gone by like so many summer fields.

The idea that I wrote something that stood for the way I feel about things, and that it lasts, that's probably my favorite thing that I've done.

You can take as much as you can from the generation that has preceded you, but then it's up to you to make something new.