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" 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. "

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" There's a time and place for everything, and my focus is music. So that's what I prefer to spend most of my time doing, and not talk about making music. "

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

" You need to keep something for yourself. As a writer, I feel that even more strongly. I feel like I need to be able to freely observe the world. That's the way I like to move through the world; I don't need to be the focus of attention. If I am, it impairs my ability to write and to do what I do. "

" I don't try to project any image at all, other than the person that I am. "

" I'm a hopeful cynic. "

" 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. "

" We do need to think about how we have security - everyone has a right to that - but we also need to think about how we maintain civil rights and personal freedom. "

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

" It's fun playing small venues. "

" 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. "

" I may be revered or defamed and decried; But I tried to live my life right. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I never travelled when I was younger. "

" As I started to consider a career in music, I hoped for success, truthfully. I didn't imagine anything that would amass the level of the first record, but I hoped that I would be able to sustain a career. "

" We all must live our lives always feeling, always thinking the moment has arrived. "

" 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! "

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

" There are some concerns that are universal. Everyone wants to be loved, and everyone wants to feel like they belong somewhere in the world. Everyone wants to do something and feel like they have a sense of purpose. These are just the things that I think about and the things that make their way into my songwriting. "

" I often write either really early in the morning, or really late at night. "

" The way popular music is categorized and formatted cuts down on everyone's options. And although people don't talk about it, there are a lot of issues of race determining musical categories of what's rock, R&B, or even folk. It ends up restricting creativity. "

" I started playing and writing songs when I was eight. "

" Men are able to sustain a career into their 50s and 60s and still present themselves as sex symbols. With women, on the other hand, people say, 'Why doesn't she retire?' "

" I grew up with music in the house. I was told I could sing as soon as I started talking. Everybody in my family sang, always lots of records, blues and jazz and soul, R&B, you know, like Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Coltrane, that kind of thing. "

" When we started making 'Where You Live', I bought a bunch of Polaroid cameras in so that people could record the experience. Some of those pictures are in the CD sleeve. "

" I end up writing about all kinds of things. I never make an attempt to write about anything in particular. I don't have a little list of topics to write about. "

" I mentioned that I received a scholarship to Episcopalian school, and the model for the school was 'From each according to his or her ability and to each according to his or her need.' And it's something that is still really important to me in thinking about how I prioritize what I do with my life. "

" 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. "

" If you are living a life that feels right to you, if you're willing to take creative chances or a creative path that feels like it's mostly in keeping with your sensibilities, you know, aesthetic and artistic, then that's what matters. "

" Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It's something I don't feel like I really control. "