I don't want somebody telling my daughter who she can marry, or what she can do with her body. That's what was at stake.

Lyrics need to be good, but they don't need to be obvious right away.

It is the melody and the rhythm that are by far the most important and then words and imagery and stuff, story bits will start to stick to a melody and that is the way I write.

You gotta lean towards the things that make you like yourself. Forget everything else.

Not all the songs are real events, but I do write about stuff that is close to my heart and it comes out one way or another.

I can never turn a tour into a vacation.

There are records that you just sink into. They coincide with what you’re going through and become an ally. If our records do that for people, that’s the greatest compliment I could ever receive. That’s one of the reasons making music is so important to me, because there’s a very strange emotional reach. For me—more than books or movies or other things—music is like a mainline to your heart.