I'm a songwriter. My voice just serves what I'm writing about. So to let all that go, I mean, bring the sensibilities of it actually to the song choices, but to just be the interpreter was incredibly liberating and really fun.

Self-expression without craft is for toddlers.

Being in Vietnam changed him [Johnny Cash] fundamentally. He was devastated when we went into Iraq.

I wanted to be the writer in the room setting depth charges of feeling out the world with my language.You know, I had a very romantic idea about that.But I grew into being a performer.

Sometimes the fragment of a conversation, the color of the sky, the image in a dream, has everything to do with where the song begins.

Once your kids get older and get out of the house, it's not like it stops. They're on the phone with me every day; I'm intimately involved in their problems.

Because I was starting out in my 20's. I wanted to do it on my own. I didn't want to use my dad or have people say I was using him.