I'd just hit the Billboard thing, and I had a good feeling. About a month ago, I received a call that said I was in the running, that I'd made the final 25. So I just wanted to place.

I liked the way they treated the first, second, and third place finishers equally. It was an amazing year. I only entered two song contests this year; I won one and placed second in the other. And I entered each of them a day or two before the deadline.

Now I'm fortunate to have a good band in CA, and play many solo gigs as well. My point is that I stopped playing in bands and played solo for four years, to get back into the groove and pulse of writing and singing and who I am on stage.

If I go to a seminar and someone like you or someone like him is talking, I'm never part of the group that rushes him directly afterward. I always wait in the back corner with my head down until everyone is gone, and then I go up and do my thing.

I was born in New Zealand, so I have a lot of family there.

I don't really care about the friendships on the court. I got my friends. I got my family, which I'm close to. I got a couple of friends that I'm always around.

Any child who has lost a parent probably knows every single photograph in existence of that parent.

None of my movies have ever made any money, so it's not about commercial success for me. It's always the same thing. I want to create something valuable, something unusual and different that the world has never seen.