It is the people who scream the loudest about America and Freedom who see to be the most intolerant for a differing point of view.Collection: Freedom
The key to change... is to let go of fear.Collection: Change
Well, the first year I lost my voice I didn't mind so much because I was going to have a baby and I was distracted with him anyway, I didn't even think about it that much, well, OK, this is what's happening.
And I kind of said to myself if I get my voice back I'm not going to take back the old anxiety about it and just focus on the limitations. I'm really going to enjoy it.
Being in the studio is like painting, you know, you can really take your time, and try different things, and kind of go deep into it.
But there's nothing that gives me more thrill than when I'm writing and a couplet works. I find the right rhyme, or it's just perfect. There's nothing that exciting.
Once your kids get older and get out of the house, it's not like it stops. They're on the phone with me every day; I'm intimately involved in their problems.
Yeah, I was in the phase for the last ten years or so where every record I made I said OK, that's the last one, I don't want to record anymore, I don't want to do this any more, I don't want to have a public life.
For the first time in 23 years I'm enjoying the process of supporting it, of going out and doing shows, and doing the interviews, and doing everything.
And I don't think that success is going to destroy me at this point in my life, like I used to think.
The new record started out being about loss, but it's morphed into being about how relationships go on even though one person is not in a body anymore.
I was down with Lucinda Williams and Mary Chapin-Carpenter. We did an acoustic tour, just the three of us, three chicks and three guitars.
Because I was starting out in my 20's. I wanted to do it on my own. I didn't want to use my dad or have people say I was using him.
I think it is wrong that we went against The U.N. and that we have alienated our allies and invaded a country that hasn't threatened us, that it is a pre-emptive strike.
No, my step-daughter just opened a theatre school for children, I have another daughter who works in the record industry and another who is going back to collage and I have two little ones at home.
War is idiocy. We live on a small, small planet, and what we do to others is what we do to ourselves.
I am so sick of reading about another car bomb, another suicide bomber, another 10, 20, 30, 70, 100 people dead in a day, both Americans and Iraqis.
The key to change is to let go of fear.Collection: Inspirational
Just a thank you is a mighty powerful prayer. Says it all.Collection: Thank You
Reading inspirational and motivational quotes daily is like taking my vitamins.Collection: Reading
For me, art is a more trustworthy expression of God than religion.Collection: Art
I dream of songs. I dream they fall down through the centuries, from my distant ancestors, and come to me. I dream of lullabies and sea shanties and keening cries and rhythms and stories and backbeats.Collection: Music
War is idiocy. We live on a small, small planet, and what we do to others is what we do to ourselvesCollection: War
If a relationship is founded on love it doesn't endCollection: Ends
It was never too late to undo who you had become.Collection: Change
I adhere to the religion of art and music and small children.Collection: Art
As John Adams said, all democracies will eventually self-destruct. We seem to be doing it very quickly.Collection: Self
Loss is the great unifier, the terrible club to which we all eventually belong.Collection: Grief
More and more, I see myself as a folk musician, and someone who values context.Collection: Musician
Documenting one's life in the midst of living it is a strange pursuit.Collection: Strange
My dad had more compassion than me. He was nonjudgmental. He didn't care where you stood politically. He just took you as a person on face value. He could love all stripes, and that's why all stripes claim him. He didn't judge.Collection: Dad
The religion I have is music. Even the times I have headaches, when I'm singing, I can't feel them. My dad used to say that, too, especially near the end of his life. He would be in pain - a lot of pain - and he said the only time when he didn't feel pain was when he performed and sang.Collection: Dad
I think books find their way to you when you need them. Whenever I feel like I'm not going to live to read all the books I want to read, I remind myself that the important ones find their way to me.Collection: Book
The ephemeral nature of live performance is the part I love most - it's a monk's sand painting, carefully constructed, then wiped away in an instant.Collection: Ephemeral
My dad [Johnny Cash] went to the [Richard] Nixon White House and refused to sing "Welfare Cadillac" (instead performing the anti-war songs "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" and "Man in Black"). He protested the Vietnam War, but he went to perform for the troops with bombs dropping all around him. He had that kind of genius: a true artist's capacity for holding two opposing thoughts at once while being large enough to encompass all realities.Collection: Song
Like Thornton Wilder said, time is not a river, but rather a landscape that you step in and out of. I've always found that true of creative work, and I've heard so many songwriters and writers in general say the same thing... When you're going into the realms of your self and trying to tap into the mystery of this creative source, linear time kind of falls away.Collection: Fall
I don't do comparisons because I always lose.Collection: Loses
We are creating a culture where content creators are a new servant class, and paid as such.Collection: Class
The thing that scares me most is the shift from serving the people to exercising power and with it, this attendant narcissism. Sarah Palin is a great example of someone that just stirs the pot for the sake of the attention.Collection: Exercise