The idea of songwriting is a transformative thing, and what I do with songwriting is take situations that are quite ordinary and transform them in some way. Apart from things like the murder ballads, the songs I write, at their core, are quite ordinary human concerns, but the process of writing about them transforms them into something else.

I think I have always had a pretty strong creative impulse. And that has probably saved me from abandoning myself completely.

Sorrow's child grieves not what has passed, but all the past still yet to come.

Texting is apocalyptic on some level. It's a reduction of things.

Guns are part of the American psyche, aren't they? This is collateral damage for having a Wild West mentality. It's intrinsic to the American psyche. It's never going to change.

I'm kind of old-school and love nothing more than sitting, opening a book, and reading it. But I also love listening to audio books.

It was about the preciousness of that, and how they viewed those birds as art, as something valuable. I didn't care one way or another back then, but now, thinking about my grandparents - who are still alive but getting older - I see the birds as sort of time capsules. Now I go home during the holidays and they hold a lot of weight in terms of nostalgia and memory. Now they mean everything.