I write my miserable songs. I write songs about disgust and self-pity. We’re all going to have bummer moments. That’s not the stuff I choose to share.

I think there’s no greater joy than completing a song out of thin air. It’s like inventing something, but it’s invisible, you know? It’s weird. It amazes me. You can send it out in the world, and that’s the joy. It’s like giving birth to all these songs and letting them go like they’re your kids.

I could experience vulnerability if I just constantly gave myself away without ever taking time out once a day or a couple times a day or whatever it is I need to restore, whether it's more sleep, or whether it's going to see a movie or writing something new.

"Be nice to your parents." When they made the decision to have a child, whether it was planned or not, they were changing their entire lives to do the best they could for this new human being. A lot of young people, we don't understand that.

Last weekend a young man asked me how I remain so positive. “It seems all the negativity in the world doesn’t affect you,” he said. I had no more than a minute with the young man so I offered this: It’s all about where you choose to put your attention, and I choose to be happy.

Musicians are so well covered in the press, it would be great to see more outspoken practitioners of green life.

You come out of a store and they give you seventy-five cents change or something, rather than drop it I would always place it in the community. Sometimes I'd flip it into the hat of a busker or give it to a homeless person. But what I most enjoyed was putting it on a windowsill or on a bench seat or somewhere where I knew that the community would get it.