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When you're a writer, your song has to resonate with the person you're writing for in order for them to want to sing it. But if you're an artist, you can sing whatever you want.

I feel there must be an enormous amount of really talented songwriters out there who can't sing.

Sometimes when you're a songwriter, you kind of have this egotistic thing: you just want to write something that you love, and you don't care about if people like it or not, but personally, I want to write something that people can jive to.

Probably most successful songwriters have an innate songwriting ability.

I still don't know if I can write songs. I don't think anyone ever knows if they can write songs.

As a songwriter, you try your best to write a good song, and you like nothing better than hearing a good song. It's easy to admire a great song, and you want to share out of enthusiasm.

I think I'm different from a lot of singer-songwriters because some of my favorite singer-songwriters told stories. Like John Prine.

I was one of those guys, you know, playing and singing, and there was no reason for me to write a song, because there were so many beautiful songs out. And Bob Dylan was always the ultimate songwriter, and nobody could ever write a song as good as him, and nobody ever has written a song as good as him.

I never thought of myself as being a good songwriter. There are a ton of other people that are good songwriters, but I don't think I'm in the club. What I do well is perform, sometimes sing pretty good, and accompany myself well and arrange fairly well.

I'm not musically inclined. It blows my mind that people can write music. I don't have that talent; I look up to the people that do.