I've worked with a lot of directors, some of them you wouldn't really attach the word 'artist' to their name.

Personally Im very happy to be behind the scenes. I like collaboration, I like working with directors.

Rebellion is obsolete - change things from the inside working out.

My major was Fine Arts and Education thinking I would become an Art Teacher. I couldn't visualize myself as an art teacher, thinking how it wouldn't work.

Choose your mutations carefully...

It's people who write music because they are obsessed that I like; because they have something to say and no other way to say it.

If you're in music just to become a big, fat rock star, then I probably don't like your music to begin with.

To me I think artists in general make a statement - and for the rest of their lives - every album, every book - are variations on a theme.

Technology has taken its toll on albums in a tough way. The CD format and MTV really played havoc on artists.

As far as the style, I was fascinated by surrealism.

If you get rid of a lot of the poseurs by destroying record companies, maybe it's a good trade-off.

The champion wins first, then walks into the arena. Everybody else walks into the arena and then tries to figure out what to do.

That was the way with folk

Climate change poses a direct threat to the infrastructure of America that we need to stay competitive in this 21st-century economy.

There is nothing more important than parents passing on a generational legacy of faith and values to their children.

The journey toward the heart is always a journey home.

The poet and the politician have this in common: their greatness depends on the courage with which they face the challenges of life.

Sam Phillips asked me to go write a love song, or maybe a bitter weeper. So I wrote a song called, "Cry Cry Cry," went back in and recorded that for the other side of the record.

Life's most persistent and urgent question is: what are you doing for others? Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little.

The muscular, athletic type is not representative of the human race, who are varied in their physique.

Great men are little men expanded; great lives are ordinary lives intensified.