Reading books is fantastic. I didn't do it until ten years ago. It's great.

I like to carry around extremely pretentious books, and I don't know if I can read them, but if I hold them near me, it imbues me with a sense of powerful intelligence.

I was listening to this record by Paul Desmond called First Place Again. It's incredibly gorgeous. There is nothing better that you would want to get from music than you get from that record.

I am a complete jazz nerd.

When I do older folk songs, I'm not doing them because they're old. I have no interest in reviving or continuing a tradition. I'm just doing them because they're great songs.

Guitar comes more out of its limitations for me, like putting it in a weird tuning and then just go places.

If I pick up a fiddle, I don't compose on it, so much as I just play whatever.

I'm not really a folk singer, but I love the music and there's certain lines that will get just stuck in my head, and they seem to be stuck there for a reason, and I start singing them.

Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his.

Live daring life.

I am a fool for Christ...whose fool are you?

Normal is all relative.

The audience will always forgive you for being wrong and exciting, but never for being right and dull.

If you want to bring the people of this world together, you have to be willing to engage with countries that do not share our [western] democratic values.

Demon, angel, all the same thing if you go back far enough, or cut deep enough.

My words are unerring tools of destruction, and I’ve come unequipped with the ability to disarm them.

I had plenty of pimples as a kid. One day I fell asleep in the library. When I woke up, a blind man was reading my face.

I've always been really curious about things and slightly confused by the world, and I think someone who feels that way is in a good position to be the one asking questions.