I have no doubt in mind that I justify the space I take up in the world.

I think it's obvious that democracy is something that is contagious, and it always has been.

What's important is you wake up in the morning and something doesn't exist, and when you finish you day's work something is in the world that wasn't there before.

When I write something simple I'm always really proud of it. When you write something that simple with that much air in it and the whole premise behind it is something pretty obvious - that everybody wants to be happy and free - the song is sort of an exercise in not forgetting that's what you really want and what you really need. We can get caught up in a lot of other stuff.

I really believe that if I make records that are indispensable to my audience, they'll go out and spend money to buy them, even if they've already downloaded them. If they can afford it. If they can't, I'd rather they be able to download it than not get it at all.

Sympathetic characters usually have a voice. They usually don't have any trouble being heard.

By the time I wrote those first three songs for his new CD ... I wanted to push the poetics as hard as I could push them, and not decide the songs were finished until I committed them to whatever the recording format was. I went through drafts right up until I recorded every single one of them.