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" It's fun playing small venues. "

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" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" People's real hopes and dreams can be distorted and misdirected and packaged until you're not sure what you really want or what you even really need. "

" 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. "

" I don't know - I'm not sure about anything as far as religion and spirituality go. "

" 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 never travelled when I was younger. "

" 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 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 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! "

" 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 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. "

" Maybe it's naive to say, but it almost seems like, in the past, people tried to sell you something you would actually need, like a hammer or a broom or a toothbrush. But now there's this notion that they can sell you anything. And all they have to do is convince you that you need it. "

" When you feel like you've had a good show, you go backstage and you talk to yourself about it, and if you have a bad show you talk to yourself about it. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Some things remain fragments, just the lyrics and melodies or a line or two or a verse. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" Honestly, I think, as an artist, it's everything that's in your life that informs what you do. So, obviously, growing up in Cleveland has played a big role in how I see the world. "