For me, something will come in my head and I'll either end up calling my cell phone to record it, or I'll just pick my guitar up and see what comes out. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't. So there's really no set method behind it.

Some goals you just never really think about trying to achieve because they just seem so out of reach.

I was always in bands before, but on 'American Idol,' it was about getting my voice out there. It was always my goal, though, to get a band together again.

I don't want to be that parent that puts my kids into what I think they should be in, you know what I mean?

I had five children in six years. The day I brought my fifth baby home, that week, my daughter turned 6.

I learned about community organizing from my parents. As a child, their stories were so instructive.

No work-family balance will ever fully take hold if the social conditions that might make it possible - men who are willing to share parenting and housework, communities that value work in the home as highly as work on the job, and policymakers and elected officials who are prepared to demand family-friendly reforms - remain out of reach.

We never really tried to shock for shock's sake on 'Family Guy'. If something was horribly offensive and shocking, we would put it in if it was also hysterically funny.