Abigail Washburn

In some ways, my most comfortable feeling has been that of being an outsider coming in, but over the years I've tired of that and I'm ready to feel at home. That's what music gives me: a feeling of absolute home. ”

I feel like the one insight that's extremely comforting to me about the world is that we all share the same pool of emotion that we draw from. ”

Whenever I visited China in the past, the relationships always felt superficial; there was no time where I felt those moments of conflict and delight that make you feel close to another person. But since I started touring there in 2004, I would always collaborate with local musicians, and that opened up a new level of intimacy. ”

When I first started playing the banjo and miraculously fell into a record deal in Nashville, TN, there was a period when I didn't go to China. It hurt. Like a pain in my gut... that pain you feel when you know it's time to connect with your parents or your God or your child or your past or your future... and you don't do it. ”

My parents played the radio, but music was never an obsession or something that I thought I could call a career. ”

I do see music as complete refuge. It's a universal home, complete common ground between everyone; it comes from a place that has no nation and no boundaries around it. ”

My whole drive is to make sure that music is a common space where we search for beauty and share it. It needs to be louder than any conversation. That's where we have to go as a human race. ”

I feel like my kind of music is a big pot of different spices. It's a soup with all kinds of ingredients in it. ”

You can enjoy many different types of music. I think that's something more Americans should think about. ”

You have to try things you're really afraid of, even if you pee yourself a little bit. ”