“I don't feel like songs should be hoarded. I don't feel like one's tainted if somebody else does it. That's the mark of artistry - take a song that's maybe even a really popular song and do it your...”

“When you're writing with an artist or for an artist, you have to help them serve their vision. That's the cool part about writing songs. There are no rules.”

“It's man's work. My dad was gone at 4:30 in the morning and home at 8 at night, and he worked underground, and the last mine he worked in was 26 inches high in a lot of places. He liked the enginee...”

“I always tell people, 'The music's free. I get paid to travel.'”

“It's such a strange marriage, a song and someone that sings it. When that works, it really works, and when it doesn't, it doesn't.”

“Whether you like modern incarnations of what country radio hits are, or you like what I'm doing, or you like something really off in folk, poetry Americana land, it's all just music, man. If you li...”

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

“This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today.”

“The best incentive for an artist are the harshest criticism”

“I have no idea how to be an artist and a lover, so I chose the one most likely to make me happy when I'm eighty and gazing back on a long and productive life.”

“Artists strive to free this true and spontaneous self in their work. Creativity, meditation are ways of freeing an inner voice.”

“We speak the truth because we live in truth.”

“There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all.”

“But for what purpose was the earth formed?" asked Candide. "To drive us mad," replied Martin.”