I'm a hopeful cynic.

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.

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.

I started playing and writing songs when I was eight.

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.

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'm a hopeful cynic.

I always considered trying to make a living playing music. But it was always really clear to me, at the various stages in my life, that it really wasn't a possibility unless some phenomenal thing happened.

Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It's something I don't feel like I really control.

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

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.

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.

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

That's one of the things I like about San Francisco. It's not like anywhere else in the world.

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

Love's a recurring theme through my work.

I won't get into it any more than to say that there are parts of me in all the songs that I write.

One of the reasons I chose Tufts is that they have one of the best veterinary schools in the country. Since I was six years old, I wanted to be a veterinarian.

As a child, I spent a lot of time at the library.

It's fun playing small venues.

Everyone is looking for connections between the songs. I don't usually approach a record as a concept. There's no overriding theme I'm trying to represent. It's all about the individual songs.

After it's finished, sometimes I can trace a path that goes back to the possible source of inspiration.

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

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

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!

My older sister encouraged me from early on and bought me one of the first guitars I had. She listened to all of the crappy songs that I wrote when I was 8 years old and encouraged me to keep doing it.

The songs are not necessarily autobiographical. A lot of songs are a combination of influences. It might be some part of my life, or something I've felt, or something somebody's told me. It all comes together.

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.