Well, the first year I lost my voice I didn’t mind so much because I was going to have a baby and I was distracted with him anyway, I didn’t even think about it that much, well, OK, this is what’s happening.

No, my step-daughter just opened a theatre school for children, I have another daughter who works in the record industry and another who is going back to collage and I have two little ones at home.

Being in the studio is like painting, you know, you can really take your time, and try different things, and kind of go deep into it.

For the first time in 23 years I’m enjoying the process of supporting it, of going out and doing shows, and doing the interviews, and doing everything.

I am so sick of reading about another car bomb, another suicide bomber, another 10, 20, 30, 70, 100 people dead in a day, both Americans and Iraqis.

Well, the first year I lost my voice I didn’t mind so much because I was going to have a baby and I was distracted with him anyway, I didn’t even think about it that much, well, OK, this is what’s happening.

I have daughters who are writers and actors but no musicians.

The new record started out being about loss, but it’s morphed into being about how relationships go on even though one person is not in a body anymore.

But there’s nothing that gives me more thrill than when I’m writing and a couplet works. I find the right rhyme, or it’s just perfect. There’s nothing that exciting.

It’s a little dangerous for me to get outside myself and think about how I want people to see me.

The key to change… is to let go of fear.

Yeah, I was in the phase for the last ten years or so where every record I made I said OK, that’s the last one, I don’t want to record anymore, I don’t want to do this any more, I don’t want to have a public life.

My record label is treating me like I’m a new artist, which is exciting after all this time.

I found it was really impossible for me to write songs when I couldn’t sing.

Once your kids get older and get out of the house, it’s not like it stops. They’re on the phone with me every day; I’m intimately involved in their problems.

I think it is wrong that we went against The U.N. and that we have alienated our allies and invaded a country that hasn’t threatened us, that it is a pre-emptive strike.

If a relationship is founded on love it doesn’t end.

Because I was starting out in my 20’s. I wanted to do it on my own. I didn’t want to use my dad or have people say I was using him.

And I don’t think that success is going to destroy me at this point in my life, like I used to think.

It is the people who scream the loudest about America and Freedom who see to be the most intolerant for a differing point of view.

Every person’s every action has an effect.

I needed to carve out my own place and find out what I was going to do.

I do not believe in terrorism, violence, destruction, murder, pre-emption, or War.

War is idiocy. We live on a small, small planet, and what we do to others is what we do to ourselves.

I was down with Lucinda Williams and Mary Chapin-Carpenter. We did an acoustic tour, just the three of us, three chicks and three guitars.

And I kind of said to myself if I get my voice back I’m not going to take back the old anxiety about it and just focus on the limitations. I’m really going to enjoy it.

When my dad died a lot of songs came, and they’re still coming.

I choose not to give energy to the emotions of revenge, hatred or the desire to subjugate.

I love mixing up my genres.