A guilty conscience means at least you have one.

I always saw songwriting as the top of the heap. No matter what else you were going to do creatively... writing songs was king.

You have to have a work ethic and you have to be educated in what you're doing. You have to take it seriously. It doesn't mean that everything you do has to be serious. But you've got to have the tools.

Folk music is not for a select group of people who feel that maybe he taught them about this music and that it belongs to them. It doesn't belong only to them. It belongs to everyone who's interested in the blueprints of good songwriting.

My songs have always had hope and perseverance in them - I never write songs that have no escape hatch, no positivity.

I think that these are different times, and different things are available to artists, and certain things have become passé. You've already seen the outcome of a lot of things that seemed to have a lot of potential. We've already heard that, and I can't tell you if it made a difference or not. But we already know that artists can do that, and they shouldn't feel threatened by doing it. They're probably not going to change the world. They're going to change a few people's perspectives and maybe make somebody's day at times, if they can.

It doesn't always have a shape,Almost never does it have a name,It maybe has a pitchfork, maybe has a tail,But evil is alive and well.