As John Adams said, all democracies will eventually self-destruct. We seem to be doing it very quickly.

I was sensitive to music and poetry, and it was around me growing up.

I think that my sensitivity to music has actually deepened and expanded as I've gotten older. You add more life experience.

The thing that scares me most is the shift from serving the people to exercising power and with it, this attendant narcissism. Sarah Palin is a great example of someone that just stirs the pot for the sake of the attention.

Well, the first year I lost my voice I didn't mind so much because I was going to have a baby and I was distracted with him anyway, I didn't even think about it that much, well, OK, this is what's happening.

The new record started out being about loss, but it's morphed into being about how relationships go on even though one person is not in a body anymore.

When my dad died a lot of songs came, and they're still coming.