Studios are designed to pull out all of that beautiful ambience you get from singing in a room, and then the engineer puts it back in digitally or through whatever machinery you've got.

Fame is a can of worms I haven't really had to contend with.

Most everything means nothing, except some things that mean everything.

You must always know how long to stay; and when to go.

I think there are times when a song can be a spiritual experience - just making music, in general, is pretty much that.

Most people like the sad songs. Some of the oldest songs known to man are sad. Listening to a voice singing something sad is a really great way to help you to feel sad when you need to.

I grew up as a Catholic, and there was so much that was beautiful there, and also so much that was troubling. The whole patriarchal thing, the whole male-dominated approach, really bothered me.

It's occurred to me I need to laugh at myself more and that I don't need to be some sad folk singer all the time. I don't want to be the queen of pain.

I think listeners are hungry to hear quality.

I don't necessarily buy any key to the future of happiness, but I need a little place in the sun sometimes or I think I will die.

Often I have to move my body in a certain way, like exercising, to begin to get into the right rhythm for writing a song.

We don't know how much we are capable of loving until the people we love are being taken away, until a beautiful story is ending.

As a boy, I believed freedom for America meant freedom for me. There was a time I believed every word spoken.

You and I were long friends: you are now my enemy, and I am yours.

It's essential that we do what's right - not necessarily what appears to be immediately popular.

Gods are nothing without their worshipers; they act on the affairs and the passions of men.

Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of like half-fast.

We should serve others without any expectations whatsoever. When others throw thorns at us, we should be able to throw flowers back at them.

There's always pressure, a great deal of pressure, when writing, since my first books were so successful.

People on the whole are very simple-minded, in whatever country one finds them. They are so simple as to take literally, more often than no, the things their leaders tell them.

Flowers are my music.