It's a real wrenching thing to go from being a private person to being a public person, especially when you're being autobiographical. But it's what everyone wants - to get everyone's attention, to have your music make a living for you, to be validated in that way.

Songs are like myths. Myths are useful because they allow you to cast yourself and your life and your own experience. And for some people, ‘Fire and Rain’ speaks to them in that way.

It’s true that I can write a song and not really be sure what the meaning of it is.

If the gig’s going really well, I’m incredibly happy on stage and really feel good about my life and things.

I’m very unstable; there’s no stability in a musician’s life at all. You live on a bus or on the road hand to mouth and you don’t know where your money’s coming from.

I’ve written a number of songs over the years and it’s a big part of my life, this sort of tension between a longing for home and the call for the open road. It’s sort of like a tug between two families. I even love to miss my home.

What I’ve always done as an entertainer is try to come up with things that people will find interesting, or compelling, or humorous.

I played the cello from when I was ten, and then I bought a guitar from the father of some friends of mine and played that for a while. And then when I was fourteen or so, I bought a guitar – a real nice one – in Durham, North Carolina, that I worked with up until I was about twenty-five.

If you’re an addict, it controls your life and your life becomes uncontrollable. It’s boring and painful, filling your system with something that makes you stare at your shoes for six hours.

I told you that I love you, I was only telling a lie. I’ll be long gone come the crack of dawn and I believe the word is goodbye.