It's a funny thing having a recording be part of your career. It means you can go back and revisit yourself, in a way most people don't.

I didn't really intend on having a music career. It just kind of happened.

Back in '98 or so when I was in film school I was working on lighting for a movie in Georgia, out in the middle of nowhere at a gas station. Inside the gas station they had a bunch of old home remedies like castor oil, and one of them was a protein supplement called Beef, Iron & Wine. I just dropped the Beef part.

The things that have been most popular with people have always been a total surprise, and so I've never felt like I could really truthfully predict public taste, so why bother?

The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples.

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

The exclusion of girls from education is an issue of justice. But it's also an issue of economics because it's holding families, communities, and nations back. The chiefs are often a bridge between the traditional and the modern world and are very powerful implements to change.

I tell all my students, 'Learn how to code.' It's sort of like learning Spanish in third grade. When you're still young and you still have that sort of agile mind, that's when you should do it.