New Orleans is a unique environment.

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.

Faith is inseparable from expectations. Where there is real faith, there is always expectation.

Beauty alters the grain of reality.

Proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates its own objects; is this not also true of fear?

Now I am nothing but a veil; all my body is a veil beneath which a child sleeps.

Sin is unwillingness to trust that what God wants for me is only my deepest happiness.

For, as I think I have said, I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.

To me, the responsibility of an actor is to recreate humanity honestly. I never feel like an actor, I always look at it from a blue collar perspective.

It's as if Thomas Kinkade and Dante were at a party, and one turned to the other sometime after midnight and uttered that classic line "You know, we really should work together sometime.

The mind of guilt is full of scorpions.