You stand in front of a great painting and your heart just opens and your mind expands about what's possible. That, to me, is a connection to what God is.

Think about all of the families where the father is a doctor and the son is a doctor or generations of coal miners. Why did they go into that line of work? Because that's what they were taught. Or was it in their genes? It's not an either/or question. It's both. I was inclined in that way. I was sensitive to music and poetry, and it was around me growing up.

I have learned to be steady in my course of love, or fear, or loneliness, rather than impulsive in its wasting, either lyrically or emotionally.

I think any young person who is going into the same field as their parent whose parent has been very successful, it's complicated.And it was complicated for me.

For the first time in 23 years I'm enjoying the process of supporting it, of going out and doing shows, and doing the interviews, and doing everything.

I have daughters who are writers and actors but no musicians.

My dad [Johnny Cash] went to the [Richard] Nixon White House and refused to sing "Welfare Cadillac" (instead performing the anti-war songs "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" and "Man in Black"). He protested the Vietnam War, but he went to perform for the troops with bombs dropping all around him. He had that kind of genius: a true artist's capacity for holding two opposing thoughts at once while being large enough to encompass all realities.