There's so much you can do with laying words on a bed of music. You can completely change their meaning with the type of music or the way they're sung.

I've always felt profoundly about what's going on in the world on a daily basis. What I hadn't felt was that I was at a point in my writing career where I could write about these things in songs and do it well.

It's so much in me to want to keep experimenting all the time. It's just inherent. Therefore I keep reaching for instruments I don't particularly know how to play, and then I become excited. That gives me energy to want to make new things, and it forces me to hear things in new ways, which then can only help to say things in a new way.

I think I'm a maker of songs, and songs are like films or a picture: You put them over there, and they have nothing to do with you.

Love for money is my sin, any man calls, I'll let him in.

With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It's almost like watching a scene from a film, and that's what I go about trying to catch in a song.

As I grew older, I actually was prepared to go into fine arts school and do a degree. That was what I was actually settled upon when I was offered a record deal.