Growing up in the '70s, it was only a few years before that when men started to grow their hair long. And in the '70s, people were pushing the envelope a little farther, with men having even more style and piercing both their ears and wearing makeup.

We have a growing new fan base, and we wanted to get out now, and play now, and the timing was right.

Who's the new Ramones, who's the new Guns 'N Roses, who's the new Motley Crue, who's the new Black Sabbath? They're coming, they're on the street, they're 16, 17 years old.

I never understood bands saying Nirvana had anything to do with derailing their career. Maybe those bands didn't have the goods.

In our friendships we have to be wise that we choose godly people to be our friends. Somebody might say, well does that mean that you should never have a lost person as your friend? No, I wouldn't say that. But you can't have the same intimacy with a lost person that you can with a godly person in whom the Holy Spirit is living.

Having grown up in a Catholic family, while I felt like I was never conscious of any blatant anti-Semitism, I was aware of a slightly insidious, us-versus-them mentality. A lot of my best friends and early girlfriends were Jewish, and I encountered what was more of a suburban small-mindedness, of people needing to defend their tribe.

When I used to live in Toronto, I would always be the busiest person out of all my friends... no one could relate to what I was doing. When I'm in L.A., I constantly feel like I'm keeping up with people, and I love that.

Margot Livesey, my dear friend, reads all the drafts of what I write, and I read hers. We have an intense working relationship. I've been really lucky to know her. She's a great reader and teacher as well as an astonishingly good writer.