I learned very early that you don't get time back. I'd miss my children growing up, so that's the reason I retired.

It's one of the things, certainly for me, anyway: I'm learning to take a bigger role in the things that I'm associated with.

I like learning new stuff, also, and I can sit there and watch shows on National Geographic and the Discovery Channel or stuff like that and learn something new. I think once you've gone through such a long stage of learning one thing, you're not as well-rounded as you'd like to be.

People will constantly bring up my past and throw it in my face, but the Creator of the Universe doesn't. If you ask forgiveness from Him, then it's gone forever. The past is never brought up to shame you or degrade you.

My life is not separate from my music, you know? It's not like a day job that I leave and go home. It's who I am as a person and how I am trying to grow, come closer to God, be a better person.

The Latin root of 'precariousness' is 'to obtain by prayer.' The precariat must ask for favours, for charity, to show obsequiousness, to plead with figures of authority. It is degrading and stigmatizing.

Put bluntly, the American church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice. We say we believe that the fundamental structure of reality is grace, not works - but our lives refute our faith.

I think the greatest taboos in America are faith and failure.