«I'm always writing from a place in my experience. Generally, I'm writing about something that I don't understand, and I'm writing to make sense of it. It's a discovery process. In that way, it's kind of therapeutic for the writer. If you stumble on something really good, like I did with 'Mercy Now,' then it becomes therapeutic for more than just the writer.»

«Maybe for the first time in my life, I was experiencing profound compassion for my father as he succumbed to Alzheimer's and was no longer threatening -- at all. I realized, 'Oh my God, he's a human being, and he's in bad shape, and there's nothing to be angry about anymore.' And then when the anger dropped, I just felt for him. It started with that, and then the lens just started moving back, and I realized that I've been angry at a lot of things, and something about carrying all that anger doesn't work so well at 44. It was kinda cool in my teens and 20s. Then in my 30s it started to be exhausting. And in my 40s, you know, I'm just too tired to be angry.»

«I was adopted when I was about a year old. My adopted parents tried, but their marriage was doomed. Music saved my life. I couldn't relate to things in Baton Rouge, but I found songs that spoke to me.»

«The most important thing I got from philosophy was that there are no answers. There's freedom in knowing that you don't have to know it all ... which is why to me a song should end with a question, not an answer.»