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" I could make records at home in a vacuum, but that is not the situation. I'm just taking it one phase at a time. "

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" I never travelled when I was younger. "

" As you might imagine, I'm approached by lots of organizations and lots of people who want me to support their various charitable efforts in some way. And I look at those requests, and I basically try to do what I can. "

" I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too! "

" So much has happened to obscure the dialogue about race and about gender and discrimination in general, especially where those things touch on economics. "

" What does the future look like if the heads of society ask our young people to risk their lives for questionable causes? I think it looks rather bleak. "

" Music was never just a hobby for me. I'd pick up a guitar every day to work on whatever I was writing at the time. I would put my ideas in songs the way some people might put them in diaries or journals. "

" As a child, I spent a lot of time at the library. "

" Everyone is looking for connections between the songs. I don't usually approach a record as a concept. There's no overriding theme I'm trying to represent. It's all about the individual songs. "

" I was raised in a Baptist tradition, but then I went to an Episcopalian high school, and they were very accepting of people of all faiths. "

" Growing up in Cleveland, I learned about singing from my mother, who had once sung professionally and who admired Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin. "

" My older sister encouraged me from early on and bought me one of the first guitars I had. She listened to all of the crappy songs that I wrote when I was 8 years old and encouraged me to keep doing it. "

" That's one of the things I like about San Francisco. It's not like anywhere else in the world. "

" I never assumed I would have that commercial success, so it was a total surprise. And honestly, I never assumed that it would ever happen again. "

" The songs are not necessarily autobiographical. A lot of songs are a combination of influences. It might be some part of my life, or something I've felt, or something somebody's told me. It all comes together. "

" I think many people would say that writers like Stephen King have hypergraphia. "

" I found myself in the middle of a race riot when I was about 14 years old, and I found someone pointing a gun at me and telling me to run or they'd shoot me. "

" My first record was almost not my first record. "

" With other people, you're always swapping music. Somebody is always listening to something you've never heard. It's a great way to hear all sorts of new things. "

" It's fun playing small venues. "

" I think it's important, if you are an artist, to use your music to stand up for what you believe in. "

" It all comes together. It's - that's the way it's always worked for me with songwriting. "

" You have to pay attention to the moment and make it the best it can be for you. I've been trying to do that. It's really made a major difference for me. I'm a happier person. "

" That's what everyone should do with their lives: stand up for what they believe in or try to do some good in the world. I don't think artists have a greater responsibility than anyone else. "

" We have more media than ever and more technology in our lives. It's supposed to help us communicate, but it has the opposite effect of isolating us. "

" There have been some gains made in terms of more equality for women in the workplace and in the way the legal system deals with issues of violence against women. "

" There are good reasons for being in jail - for protesting. "

" I had a ukulele when I was much younger. I have no idea what happened to it but I think that was part of it, just being inspired and wanting to try to play an instrument that, to me, sounded beautiful. "

" I decided to do whatever I could to make sure the business side of music didn't intrude on the creative part. "

" I'm not sure about anything as far as religion and spirituality go. "

" Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms. "