You don't know what you need when you're a young writer. You can get small slivers of critical input, advice, comments, but if you're deep in the perplexity of your own process, as you should be, sorting it out in your own way, nothing is going to guide you more than small gestures of encouragement.

I think that those moments before a performer plays are the moments when the potential for something to be created may - or may not - arrive.

A few days after 9/11, I put the old cassette of 'Born in the U.S.A.,' twisted and worn, on the car deck as I drove past West Point, across the Bear Mountain Bridge, along the Hudson River. It was the perfect moment to hear it.

A kiss is often about the future and the past. A lost dream, about the discretion of the idealism.

My father felt that children should make their own way.

I struggle with myself every day - I am a lonesome person. I talk to my family - and I connect to some people deeply along the way - but I am a restless soul. Singing is the most immediate relief.

A kid in an abusive home has far fewer rights than any POW. There is no Geneva Convention for kids.

I'm really close to my family, and we talk through things. My parents are so amazing, they're brilliant. We try to take one step at a time and be wise about the decisions we make and keep our values and the things that are important.