My record label is treating me like I'm a new artist, which is exciting after all this time.

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.

And I don't think that success is going to destroy me at this point in my life, like I used to think.

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.

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.

The key to change... is to let go of fear.

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.

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.

I have daughters who are writers and actors but no musicians.

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.

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.

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.

War is idiocy. We live on a small, small planet, and what we do to others is what we do to ourselves.

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.

Every person's every action has an effect.

If a relationship is founded on love it doesn't end.

When my dad died a lot of songs came, and they're still coming.

My record label is treating me like I'm a new artist, which is exciting after all this time.

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.

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.

I needed to carve out my own place and find out what I was going to do.

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.

It's a little dangerous for me to get outside myself and think about how I want people to see me.

I do not believe in terrorism, violence, destruction, murder, pre-emption, or War.

I love mixing up my genres.

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.

I choose not to give energy to the emotions of revenge, hatred or the desire to subjugate.

I found it was really impossible for me to write songs when I couldn't sing.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

The artist need not know very much; best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks.

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

I'm inspired by nature. Other artist's work is important for developing my perception.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.

What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen.

You have to find what makes you stable in the storm. Then, no matter what's happening round you, no matter what the hype or the publicity, you can still manage to make leaps in your work as an artist.

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.

I've always felt that if one was going to take seriously this vocation as an artist, you have to get beyond that decorative facade.

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

The most colorful section of a bookstore is the display of SF books, with art by people like Wayne Barlow, who is a terrific artist.

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

Let not a man do what his sense of right bids him not to do, nor desire what it forbids him to desire. This is sufficient. The skillful artist will not alter his measures for the sake of a stupid workman.

I so much appreciate it when anybody tries to make something and tries to be an artist - I'm happy to see the work.

The artist is seen like a producer of commodities, like a factory that turns our refrigerators.