If I can make something real and it's appreciated and accessible to other people, I'm happy.

What I like is not a particular genre, it's storytelling. There's a lot of great storytelling in jazz, and in folk and in country music.

I've followed my voice rather than forcing it to emerge.

People are a lot more open than even they think they are. And I feel like I carry a heavy story about where I come from and those roots, but also what I like as a thinker.

I just want something that is real and that moves people. And just want to make something real.

Just because I'm a recording artist doesn't mean I'm not an artist. Because I had to grow.

I'm not angry. I can't sing that loud for that long anyway, I'll start coughing - I don't have the instrument for it. I don't feel that emotional. I'm at peace.

I understood that 'The Yellow Birds' would be a peculiar representation of the experience of being at war. I intended it to be so.

It was from an old friend who thought he was dying. Anyway, he said, 'Life and death issues don't come along that often, thank God, so don't treat everything like it's life or death. Go easier.'

I think because my brother was an actor and I just saw how he struggled through, I guess I'm sensitive to it.

When I wrote 'Green, Green,' it was like a really a statement of where I was at philosophically in my life.

In L.A. you hear all these stories of people being filmed in their own homes through their windows. I think that is so scary.

That's always the way with fanatics; they cross themselves at the tavern and throw stones at the temple.

My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.

I fear it as little as to drink a cup of tea.

God cannot reveal anything to us if we have not His spirit.

Coming from where I came from, it was unimaginable to ever be wealthy. That was just too far out of my reach.