I think grief is a huge subject; it's one of the things that everybody is going to confront in one way or another. There's been a lot of books written about how Americans have an odd way of trying to defer grief or minimize the need to grieve. People used to have a lot more ritual grief in their lives. For the most part, we think of it as a strictly temporal process: you grieve for a time and then you're over [it], but it's also a spatial process. It travels across a map.

This is the funny thing about me. People think John just comes up with all the ideas. I'm honored. People think I have a big old brain, but actually I am the sum of the people I work with.

Everybody is in various states of needing to transcend something. I believe in mental health care, but when we call people "crazy," we exclude them from our circle.

People want you to play the songs they know. I try not to reflect too much, and I don't really like to focus too much on myself.

Men tend to dominate whatever public discourse they participate in, and another big part of feminism is to let women have their say. Men's voices can be welcome at the table, but there is a time and a place, and maybe it's now, for men to make a little less noise, make their needs less known, and listen to the needs of others.

There are real teachers out there; I don't pretend to have their mantle.

It makes me envious of anybody who can say truly that they don't care what anybody thinks of what they do, because I care a lot about the people who like my stuff.