The idea that I wrote something that stood for the way I feel about things, and that it lasts, that's probably my favorite thing that I've done.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

No matter how close to yours another's steps have grown, in the end there is one dance you'll do alone.

Musician jokes are a kind of joke that usually have to do with how much money someone makes. Musicians are always starving, so they're really mean to each other about who makes what.

We have an open society. No one will come and take me away for saying what I am saying. But they don't have to, if they can control how many people hear it. And that's how they do it.

So what I do, more than play any instrument - I mean, I love to play - but more than that, I write songs. Songs that are about living, about what it's like to be going through all the things that people go through in life.

I told my father I wanted to play the banjo, and so he saved the money and got ready to give me a banjo for my next birthday, and between that time and my birthday, I lost interest in the banjo and was playing guitar.

I've also gotten to play in front of a million people in Central Park when there was a grass roots movement calling for nuclear disarmament - it was about 1982 - they called it Peace Sunday.

That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played.

And my dad wanted me to play the trumpet because that's what he liked. His idol was Louis Armstrong. My dad thought my teeth came together in a way that was perfect for playing the trumpet.

I never was a very good singer.

I started playing the trumpet when I was about eight.

I love to read. I love to stretch. In the morning, I get up, and if I'm not in a hurry, I will lie on the floor on a rug, look through some books and magazines, and maybe listen to music and try to do stretching exercises to tune up.

So I had a couple of years of playing trumpet. I really enjoyed it, but it was not the kind of instrument you could whip out at a party. Let's face it.

I grew up reading Shakespeare and Mark Twain.

Now, guitar was pretty cool. Everybody knew something on the guitar. So I wanted to play guitar, but I told my dad if he wanted me to keep studying something, I'd like to study piano.

You can take as much as you can from the generation that has preceded you, but then it's up to you to make something new.

I'd have to say that my favorite thing is writing a song that really says how I feel, what I believe - and it even explains the world to myself better than I knew it.

Right around the end of the fifties, college students and young people in general, began to realize that this music was almost like a history of our country - this music contained the real history of the people of this country.

I wrote the song For A Dancer for a friend of mine who died in a fire. He was in the sauna in a house that burned down, so he had no idea anything was going on. It was very sad.

Like, What is the least often heard sentence in the English language? That would be: Say, isn't that the banjo player's Porsche parked outside?

That's maybe the most important thing each generation does, is to break a lot of rules and make up their own way of doing things.

When I really started liking music was when I could play some of it myself, and after a couple of years of playing folk music, I kinda rediscovered those hits that were on the radio all the time when I was a kid.

As far as those kinds of things, I also played at the concert to call for the release of Nelson Mandela when he was a political prisoner in South Africa. We were celebrating his 70th birthday and calling for his release.

Music itself is a great source of relaxation. Parts of it anyway. Working in the studio, that's not relaxing, but playing an instrument that I don't know how to play is unbelievably relaxing, because I don't have any pressure on me.

It was a great time to be born, because I got to have my own publishing company right from the beginning, so I made more money than somebody would have doing what I did ten or fifteen years before.

I taught myself to play the piano, because I wanted to play it.

The biggest influence? I've had several at different times - but the biggest for me was Bob Dylan, who was a guy that came along when I was twelve or thirteen and just changed all the rules about what it meant to write songs.

The idea that I wrote something that stood for the way I feel about things, and that it lasts, that's probably my favorite thing that I've done.

Also, right at that particular time in the music business, because of people like the Beatles, people began owning their own publishing. I'll just say this really quickly - they used to divide the money for the music that was written in two, just equal halves.

English people are so trapped in this class paradigm.

I get some heat for what English people call 'overproduction.' I don't think my older stuff was overproduced, but I do think that sound has dated.

I'm a big fan of British journalists like 'The Independent's Robert Fisk, but it's hard to find voices like his in the U.S.

If someone said, 'You can go live in this little town in Costa Rica for a couple of weeks and all you've got to do is sing for us,' I would do that. That's more exciting to me than the prospect of going on some national tour, where you're going to play arenas or sheds every night, because of the crushing repetition of that kind of line.

People know more about baseball players' contracts than they do about the policies that govern the fate of our children's lives in twenty years. Think about it. People used to say, the whole time I was growing up, 'Do you want to bring a child into this world?' That's pretty dire.

Very often it's really inconvenient - who you fall in love with. You can't really control it.

Famine and disaster right there in front of you and the more you watch the less you do.

My favorite singer to this day is Nat King Cole. I've tried to emulate his phrasing. It is so absolutely beautiful to listen to his lovely voice.

My romantically favorite era is 78, 79 listening to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 4, the live tapes, echo chamber and break beats.

My favorite actor is Wallace Beery.

If I'm out trailriding, I have a favorite motorcycle. Riding on the road, I've got a favorite. If I'm jumping, I have a favorite, and if I'm racing, I have a favorite.

My favorite animal is steak.

Robert Altman's Nashville is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

I felt like I was making a record under the radar, and that is my favorite way to do anything.

My favorite thing is still journalism. I'm almost 50. This has been my life ever since I was in college.

My favorite comedians were Jimmy Durante, George Burns, senior citizens.

I'm very lucky to work in so many different arenas of the entertainment industry and I do enjoy them all, but making music - original music - in the studio or live onstage is definitely my favorite thing to do.

Alison Krauss is definitely my favorite singer that's ever lived. I've never heard anyone like her.

My favorite type of music to sing and to listen to, you know, rock. It's not always metal, but you know, half the time it is. Metal's cool, you know? Not everybody on 'American Idol' listens to metal.