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.

At different times I taught humanities, social sciences and pre-vocational education.

I, for one, struggle a little bit with a $250,000 education for a philosophy degree. They are a wonderful people, but we can't employ philosophers in manufacturing in the United States. We need a one- or two-year technical add-on for a high school.

The problem is that we are trying to prepare people for the new economy using a higher education system built for the old economy. As a result, many high-skilled, high-paying industries suffer from a shortage of labor, while too many low-paying industries suffer from a surplus.

We think about education as a stepping stone into a higher socio-economic class, into a better job. And it does do those things. But I don't think that's what it really is. I experienced it as getting access to different ideas and perspectives and using them to construct my own mind.