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.

When I was 18 years old, I went on the road with my dad after I graduated from high school. And we were riding on the tour bus one day, kind of rolling through the South, and he mentioned a song. We started talking about songs, and he mentioned one, and I said I don't know that one. And he mentioned another. I said I don't know that one either, Dad, and he became very alarmed that I didn't know what he considered my own musical genealogy.

I was a songwriter; that was the torch I carried. This is an honorable profession. This is what I do.

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.

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

The ephemeral nature of live performance is the part I love most - it's a monk's sand painting, carefully constructed, then wiped away in an instant.

Like Thornton Wilder said, time is not a river, but rather a landscape that you step in and out of. I've always found that true of creative work, and I've heard so many songwriters and writers in general say the same thing... When you're going into the realms of your self and trying to tap into the mystery of this creative source, linear time kind of falls away.