Beth Hart

One of the beautiful things about music is it gives you an opportunity to learn how to tell the truth, and it's a life-long learning process.

The only thing as a kid that really mattered to me was that I wouldn't quit. When I say 'quit,' I mean you wake up, you go to the piano, you go to whatever instrument, and you work at learning how to tell the truth.

The transition from fan to performer to recording artist, for me, was like learning how to dive... and each board got higher and higher.

I guess it's about getting older. I know that I'm going to lose people that I love - I'm going to die myself - so everything seems to be getting somehow sweet and more important and more special and more humbling and more challenging and more terrifying all at the same time.

I don't ever go and write music for an album. That's not something I do. I don't go and write music for an audience or a career; I don't do that at all. I write basically all the time. I'm addicted to it.

If I'm in a good place, then I'm really open-minded to what's being presented, but if I'm in a bad place, I'm much more closed-minded.

The piano represents home to me. It represents a place where I can heal - the sound of it, the feel of it, the way it looks.

Each night, we try something new, play different songs, see what works, what goes down well, mix it up a bit until we find the right mix.

I love getting to have different food and getting to be around different people and different cultures and different ways people look at life. It's really kind of helped me open up my mind and see the world from different perspectives.

I worked with Mrs. Davis for four years, and then she realized, as the material started getting harder, that I had never learned to read. I was just listening as she'd play the song, and I'd play it back. When that happened, she got very upset and stopped being my teacher.

I think that anytime that you can open your eyes and see all that you have and all that you've been blessed with, it's the greatest way to connect you with God, just being grateful rather than always wanting more, wanting to be different, wanting to be better.

Once I finish something, if I don't feel that it's absolutely fabulous, there's no way I would ever let it be recorded, I wouldn't even present it to a producer.