You go back and look at some of the ancient writings that exist throughout the world about wars and it's the same; the human beings' articulation of events is the same. That really fascinated me.

I long ago learned that you can't expect people to interpret the songs in the way they had meant for you, as the writer.

Before I record for real, I know pretty much exactly how I want them to feel.

It's so much in me to want to keep experimenting all the time. It's just inherent.

Well, I don't really concern myself too much with what other people make of my work.

I didn't know folk music growing up, no. It's something I've come to study, really, because I think there's so much to learn from traditional music in the sense of the way music began as a way of communication, the traveling storyteller, the bard, the minstrels.

Everything from a lifetime's worth of collecting things. You know as we go through life, and something stays and ends up on your shelf and lives there until you die? Just those little things.