Some people want fame, popularity and huge sales. I've always hoped to have a really long career. So I've tried to make each of my creative decisions and business decisions to allow for longevity. As a side effect I got really famous and really big. I didn't realize the two could go together.

I have always been a workaholic.

I have hundreds and hundreds of songs waiting to get on albums, but I don't know about the three-month radio tours and if I'll be interested in that. I haven't figured it out, but I will definitely be doing music, whether it is independent or with a major record label.

I was turning 20 during my first record. Those decade birthdays always kind of cause me, it seems, to reflect, look back, and then look forward. I just was closing this period of my life where I was living in a car and scrambling my whole life to then signing a six-record deal with Atlantic.

I'm not a wild and crazy person.

I'm a happy mum. I didn't think it was in the cards for me, so I feel very blessed.

I've had mentors who were kind of the troubadour singer-songwriters, like Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Neil Young, and that's just what I've always liked - people who would talk real honestly about their lives and their circumstance.

I'm the classic absent-minded professor: I'm very focused on something, and meanwhile, I've left the refrigerator door open for hours.

I sort of came out at the dawn of the Internet in the mid-90s and I think it helped break my career. I think I was one of the first artists to really benefit from the grassroots swell that can happen online. I don't know if I would have broken out without it.

My whole goal is to keep my spirit intact. If that doesn't happen, none of this is worth it.

If you write a hit song for Britney Spears, it's worth several million dollars. Just one song! And it might have taken you two hours to do it. It's like mining for gold. It takes a lot of skill and a lot of technique.

I was Renee Zellweger's fat doppelganger. If she ever played in a movie where she needed to be fat, apparently I could be her stunt double.

It's like a garden: Whatever you water the most will do the best. At some point, you decide whether you'll water your career or your relationship more.

I think when kids just see well-crafted poetry, it's just obtuse to them. It's hard to relate to.

I would always encourage people of any age not to be so quick to follow other people's truths but to search and follow your own moral code and live by your own integrity, and mostly just be brave.

Lots of people have gone from public housing to do great things in the world and have a tremendous sense of duty to their fellow man because of it.

Records have never really been my strong suit. I've always been a much better live act. I didn't understand the language of the studio. You sing differently in a studio. The language, the craft - it's just a whole different deal. I avoided the problem on my first record by doing a live album.

I'm becoming more and more myself with time. I guess that's what grace is. The refinement of your soul through time.

I love playing big rooms. There's nothing like it. It's a power trip.

Amazingly, I've been sort of an anomaly in the music industry. I feel like I've been able to exist as kind of a throwback artist.

You have a different crowd every night, so you should do a different show to suit them. I tailor the show to their mood.

The things you fear are undefeatable, not by their nature, but by your approach.

For now I'm just enjoying being a mom. I don't want to be more famous and more rich. I want to be a good mom.

I'm half alive but I feel mostly dead.