Like most kids, I grew up singing 'This Land Is Your Land' in grammar school, but with the most radical verses neatly removed. This was before I knew it was a Woody Guthrie song.

Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.

America's criminal justice system isn't known for rehabilitation. I'm not sure that, as a society, we are even interested in that concept anymore.

I don't believe that songwriting has to be profound, but I truly believe that it's a crime for you to go outta your way for it not to be.

I have a low tolerance for mediocrity in music and life. I'm into pain and joy and the in-between doesn't interest me.

Actually, in its purest form, Islam is incredibly tolerant. That makes what's going on in the world really bizarre.

All we do as songwriters is rewrite the songs that have impressed us till we find our own voice. It's part of learning the craft.

You see things differently at 40 than you do at 31. Especially if you got to 40 the way I did.

Every day on Earth is another chance to get it right.

I don't really think in terms of obstacles. My biggest obstacle is always myself.

To me, religion is an agreement between a group of people about what God is. Spirituality is a one-on-one relationship.

We know so little about what goes on in another person’s head.

He had never thought in his wildest imagination of marriage as an opti

When I work on music, I never think about vocalists. They're the last person I'm making music for.

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake... This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don't want it.

It is pride which fills the world with so much harshness and severity. We are rigorous to offenses as if we had never offended.

What you lose in the world will not be a loss to your soul.

A mind conscious of right laughs at the falsehoods of rumour. [Lat., Conscia mens recti famae mendacia risit.]

There is a God-shaped vacuum in every man that only Christ can fill.

Despite all the lunacy of the last century, all the absurdity of war and genocide, we believe that humans being are rational and are made to seek the truth.