I like making songs up. Whether or not they're great songs or good songs, whatever. It's something I've always done, and I definitely feel like I've gotten better at it.

I've never been healthier. I haven't had a cigarette in two years. I run four or five miles, four or five times a week. I've been healthy and having a really good time.

What you once were isn't what you want to be anymore.

I have always thought it was important to maintain some connection for myself to what it takes to make a song work by myself, to put a song across to an audience by myself.

I think the songs are more about relationships that are endless.

There's probably not any kind of music that means more to me than gospel and soul. I heard somebody say that soul music is being proud of where you're from and what you've accomplished, and letting that show. Losing some self-consciousness and ego to join something larger. I like that idea a lot, just letting it all hang out, and on this album we did our best at that.

If someone uses the amount of time I spend in the public eye as criteria for what my music could possibly mean to them, they probably should take a long, hard look in the mirror and figure out why they need to think they're so special. Because I don't think anybody is that special.