I think one of the reasons musicians keep doing what they do and writers keep doing what they do, is that we're totally unsuited for anything else. And I for one am much too lazy.
I feel I was born with the music coming to me, and that's not something to be wasted.
When you're young, the goal is to have a hit. You get a little older and the goal becomes to get to make another record.
It's what I do well - I write about things that make people uncomfortable. That's probably the only thing I do better than my peers.
I've always been an avid reader. If I don't have a book in the car, I'll stop and pick one up just to have something to read. I don't even remember learning to read.
I think I grew up, stopped worrying about what people thought of me, and whether things were going to turn out OK. I'm concentrating on doing the best work I can do and letting it go at that.
I think all of us thought that by the '70s, at the latest the '80s, all the world's problems would be solved and everyone would be getting along fine. And instead we saw that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated that year, Robert F. Kennedy died. We saw that it was going to be a lot more difficult than I think we had thought.
I think these last 10 years have seen just a huge shift in the psyche of this country as regards gay people. I think AIDS had a lot to do with it. So many families who really believed they'd 'never met one' were suddenly confronted with their sons becoming ill, and friends of sons. I think that brought a lot of it into the open.
I played for anybody and everybody from the time I started playing guitar, when I was 10 or 11.
I gave guitar lessons. I tried to join bands. My mom always said it was obvious that nothing was going to stop me.
I want to do some fiction writing, I've had some pretty good luck with short stories, I'd like to do a couple of larger things.
I know just enough Japanese to get by if I get lost and greet an audience properly, just from having a lot of Japanese friends and being there over the years.
That's an amazing moment, the first time you hear yourself on radio. It's still thrilling.
I mean, I would love to have the career Joan Baez is having in Europe right now, but God knows I don't begrudge her that career.
Some people would rather stay ignorant and self-satisfied.
There will always be those people who are just backward and ignorant. There will always be those people. They need somebody to feel superior to.
I see interracial couples all the time in Nashville. I'm a Jew in Nashville. I'm a gay person in Nashville. It's a non-issue in most of the time. That's a huge leap forward.
