Songwriting is the most terrifying thing to me, because you are really laying your heart out there.

I've written several deeply personal songs this year, which I really love. Some of them came out of intense sadness. This has been an extremely difficult year for me.

I have a musical called Goodbye and Good Luck, based on a Grace Paley short story. I also have King Island Christmas, and there are 20 different productions of it this year.

I don't like to produce albums. I hate producing albums, as a matter of fact, because I'm an obsessed mixer and I can't leave it alone.

As time goes by, I realize that I do trust the wind. And I often write my songs for myself.

It's an interesting line that I walk. The AIDS crisis has done a lot for my songs and made them proliferate, and my songs have contributed a lot to that cause as well.

I may not be the most famous songwriter in the world, but you know a David Friedman song when you hear it. It took me a long time to appreciate that.

When my writing really started to take off was when I made a decision that I would write only what I wanted to write, and if 10 people wanted to hear it, that's fine.

Corn ethanol can help in the short term, but it has serious limitations, and none of this is going to work if we don't dramatically improve the efficiency of our cars and trucks.

I'm not comfortable singing in front of people yet. That's going to take another 100 performances.

As a person, I'm not that hopeful, but somehow the hopeful part of me reveals itself through my songs.

There is no seam between my songs and myself-they really are me. It's not like I'm performing; I'm just singing stuff that I really believe.

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

I've been doing a lot of studying singing, and I'm thinking of recording an album containing all my old war horses and putting out a songbook at the same time.

I write and direct the Duke University Children's Hospital Benefit every year.

I fought for years and spent a fortune fighting and never got anywhere.

When I got to Broadway, I conducted five Broadway shows.

I'm trying to have everything that I put into the world be something that makes a difference in the way I want to make a difference.

I know a lot of people who have tremendous commercial success and they go directly for it. There's something that has always been difficult about that for me.

I was talking to my spiritual advisor. I got a letter from somebody who said that they were about to kill themselves, but they listened to a song of mine and it saved their lives.

Composition is definitely what I'm born to do, and it came last.

In the music industry, we value large success. I realized that while I would like that, that it's not what my writing is about. And if I start making it about that, it becomes impure.

I'm not totally altruistic. I've always had great career ambitions. But it has to come out in an organic way. If you push yourself out beyond where you are supposed to be, there's this pressure.

It sometimes feels like I'm not doing anything.

My first career was as a coach and a teacher.

I think of my songs as there to be something to move people emotionally.

I've been doing my big theater projects, which take years, and writing a song here and there.

I have been writing since I was about 20, and at first I wrote in secret and never showed anybody. I was very concerned about making a living, so I conducted.

My career keeps shifting; I keep doing the next thing and it keeps growing.

I publish my own music. I'm creating my own songbook. It works that way for me; I'm very independent.

I wanted to produce Nancy LaMott's albums, so I created my own record company.

Songwriting is the most terrifying thing to me, because you are really laying your heart out there.

For Hunchback, we needed this live, gigantic choir. So we went to London and said, This is Disney! I need singers who can sing high D's, hold them for 18 seconds, and do it 60 times!

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

Thank you to all for your prayers and good wishes. It gave me the strength to persevere and warmed my heart.

Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul.

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.

A man must be strong in that profession, he must have vigor of body and mind, yet I am all out of breath if I walk up a hill; I have not the heart to crush even a fly.

Well, after I had the heart attack, it was a very simple choice. What the doctor told me I did and I did it religiously. I ate nothing but lean turkey breast or chicken breast or a piece of fish that was very lean. I mean I stayed away from everything.

Then, in that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country, and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

I try to teach my heart not to want things it can't have.

The heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good.

When you know something in your heart, you better not be quiet about it. You better speak out about it.

Death comes not to the living soul, nor age to the loving heart.

In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.

If you give it good concentration, good energy, good heart and good performance, the song will play you.

Great joy, especially after a sudden change of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue.

There is no persuasiveness more effectual than the transparency of a single heart, of a sincere life.