I adhere to the religion of art and music and small children.

As I started writing about loss and grief, I was taking what felt unmanageable and using my songwriting, my sense of poetry and discipline, to try and make it manageable.

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

My dad had more compassion than me. He was nonjudgmental. He didn't care where you stood politically. He just took you as a person on face value. He could love all stripes, and that's why all stripes claim him. He didn't judge.

Self-expression without craft is for toddlers.

Isn't that the goal, as you grow older? That you start reclaiming those parts of yourself you didn't recognize or didn't think were there all along? That's what happened when I made The River and the Thread record.

I do not believe in terrorism, violence, destruction, murder, pre-emption, or War.