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" I'm a hopeful cynic. "

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" 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. "

" 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. "

" I can't think of anything worse, really, than to try to live up to someone else's expectations of what you should be. You don't make art by consensus. "

" 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. "

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

" It's fun playing small venues. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I meet people in my daily life, people who seem to experience some change and some growth on a personal level, and that gives me hope. "

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

" I think religion played a huge part in Bush's re-election. "

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

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

" Love's a recurring theme through my work. "

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

" I learn all these things about the record talking about it after it's finished. "

" 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. "

" As a child I always had a sense of social conditions and political situations. I think it had to do with the fact that my mother was always discussing things with my sister and me - also because I read a lot. "

" I dressed up as a veterinarian for a Halloween costume party. I had the lab coat. I got a couple of stuffed animals for patients and put bandages on them. "

" 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. "

" I think of the audience the way I would think of another person: You meet someone, then you take it from there; you see what's interesting to both of you. "

" A lot of kids spent more time out of school than in, but I always loved school and thought it was my way out of Cleveland, and out of poverty. "

" 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! "

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

" 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. "