I listen to music every day for study reasons, and I confess that I have very little knowledge of what is going on in the hit parades around the worl….

That's where it begins and ends for me and these songs were the ones that touched me the deepest. It was like I was laying hold of some part of me th….

I grab an instrument to make my body a song, but I'm not a player as such, maybe a little more on guitar, but certainly not piano..

All the high-tone, big-time folks would say, 'Isn't it wonderful how these untrained, primitive musicians can pick up all the latest songs instantly ….

The idea of writing songs because you're depressed and you need to communicate it somehow, that isn't really true for me..

I have some irrepressible pop impulses to write an appealing, concise song. And I also have some irrepressible kind of restlessness as well, and I ne….

I work on words quite separately to music. They're both ongoing, and I don't ever feel like I'm working in a cycle in that respect, because it's ever….

The people wanted to believe that the Negroes couldn't learn to read music but had a natural talent for it. So we never played with no music. I'd get….

I think I took a few stabs at writing socially conscious lyrics. I had never intended to write a song about the Gulf War, but when I wrote "Before Yo….

A guy said to me, 'You're so lucky. You have people like Ray Charles, Barbra Streisand and The Beatles doing your songs.' I figured out, though, the ….

Our shows have always been sort of an all-generations thing, people from 6 to 60. The other night, we played a show and we had a woman who was probab….

The orchestra's an amazing instrument, but I don't want to just arrange my songs for it. I think that might be kind of boring and a little bit overdr….

To sing a song is like whispering to a child's ear. It is an art heavily relying on improvisation..

When they turned off, it was still early in the pink and green fields. The fumes of morning, sweet and bitter, sprang up where they walked. The inse….

I'm always constantly doing stuff with Beyonce in mind. Anytime I hear a beat I think she'll love, I'll put something to it and go from there and hop….

It's funny: not only with the title of the album but also the song [It's Decided]. I kind of felt nostalgic. The beginning lyric is, "There's almost ….

Love isn't always magic. But if I offered my body to the magician, if I told him to cut me in half so after that I could come to you whole and ask fo….

All things in the world are singing a song, reciting a poem, inaudibly, to their surroundings, to the things they encounter..

I can't relate to the process of just disappearing and writing a record, all at the same time, followed by the sort of drudgery of going out on tour ….

I’ve learned to live with rage. In some ways, it’s my rage that keeps me going. Without it, I would have been whipped long ago. With it, I got a lot ….

To be part of Kevin's [Drew] world, "Who Came First" is just kind of a magical symphony. If you're asking me what that emotional timbre what is my fa….