“What I strive to do with songwriting is be really honest, authentic and try to be open and share that with people. I choose that over trying to be clever, poetic, or lyrical.”

Follow your heart and you won’t get lost.

I think everybody, no matter what they eat, they should eat at least fifty percent raw food. But I eat some seafood.

I always saw myself as an old man living in the mountains playing a guitar, but I didn’t really turn that into a desire to be a professional musician or a singer or a rock star or anything like that.

I can write songs, but I’m not gonna really feel good about the song unless it feels like me, and I’m not gonna release a song or put it on an album or play it in concert unless it really feels like me.

I wanted to be a singer. I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to travel and write songs and be a good songwriter. It came to me slowly after college.

Pain is a part of life. It’s certainly part of my creative process.

I’m a very typical yoga-practicing musician; I do it when I can. I’m not hardcore about it. A lot of my lyrics talk about celebrating life and working through pain. I think that’s what yoga’s about, getting rid of, moving energy and letting it flow through you.

I like to still have thought and be aware of people and whatever that’s happening, but I also like to just focus on the words that I’m saying.

The people at festivals are much more open to dance and just sing along. They come right up to the stage and they’re very thankful.

It’s usually kids that normally don’t have a chance to get to meet each other because they’re separated by millions of different things.

Nothing has happened too fast, nothing has happened too slow. It has been a mellow rise, and I’m thankful for that. I haven’t lost my head, and I haven’t lost my desire to keep growing.

I used to want to be fully observational, but I’m just not that kind of writer. My process always changes depending on how, when, and where inspiration stiles me.

I think most artists would agree, it’s one thing to be playing in front of a crowd that’s loving it, it’s another thing to add cameras, but it’s a really cool trade off to be on television.

I’m trying to capture something more fragile than a regular story. I love what people bring me.

I’d done a few short films before and thought acting was really creative, but when I worked with those guys, I was just like: “Wow!” They had such fun and freedom. They were trying things and stretching themselves. It was so inspiring that I was like: “I definitely want to do this!”

I don’t try to make a place in history at all! People put me in the history of cinema because my first film, La pointe-courte, was so ahead of some other filmmakers.

We also want to try and slow down all this foolishness that’s going on between the East and West.

It’s just that song, and I’m trying to really sound like what the song is about.

We try to avoid the single-building syndrome. You have to look at the big picture. If you try to put social and cultural development ahead of economic development, it doesn’t work. You have to do it all together.

I see all these students, and I admire them – they’re trying to learn something, they go to school, they do film school, they go on shoots, they help.

I tried to find a language for the film – not just telling stories. I picked the Picasso painting because it said more than I could explain.