When I hear a great musician, I can feel his life inside the music.

I think I'm built like a painter. I have friends who are painters and they reflect a similar psychological attitude towards their work. They don't know what's coming next, they just wait for the message, for orders to come and then off they go on their next project.

The biggest government waste: The death penalty. An individual death-penalty case could climb to $100 million, much of it spent at the litigation level. Also, DNA evidence has exonerated nearly 300 death-row inmates.

Music that touches the transcendental aspect of a human being is reserved for a marginal audience

There is really no spiritual message that I'm trying to convey with my music, it's just a personal thing. I really believe that the more personal we get, in a way, the more universal the implications.

There are two kinds of success. One is musical or artistic and the other is commercial.

If I can get out of the way, if I can be pure enough, if I can be selfless enough, and if I can be generous and loving and caring enough to abandon what I have in my own preconceived silly notions of what I think I am - and become truly who in fact I am, which is really just another child of God - then the music can really use me. And therein lies my fulfillment. That's when the music starts to happen.