Quotes from M. Ward

I got this Christmas gift with the entire Beatles catalog. I had fun trying to duplicate what I was hearing on these records, only using the instruments I had at hand - an acoustic guitar, and that's all. It was endlessly amusing to me to try to imitate John Lennon and Paul McCartney's harmonies using the guitar.

It's a luxury to not have to just be performing with other people to have my music heard.

I'm somebody who doesn't feel the need to be in the driver's seat all the time. I appreciate the perspective of being in the passenger's seat sometimes, and I feel fortunate for that because I've learned a lot from that perspective.

The best live recordings capture elements of surprise onstage.

I have a very strong belief in God.

I love the idea that I planned my career. I did not. It started out by getting invitations from artists that I really love and respect, to share a stage... I've been very lucky in that I haven't had to create a five-year plan. It's evolved.

Try to take your vision and ego as far away from the song as possible. Give as much respect as you can to the song and the initial inspiration.

It's no fun for me to cover a song and produce it the exact same way as it already exists. When I hear that happening, I have to say, 'What's the point?'

The South of France is one of my favorite places in the world.

I wouldn't want to cover a Hank Williams song in a country-western way. It doesn't occur to me instinctually to re-create productions. I'm interested in re-creating songs. Putting different clothes on them.

One of the great things about music is that it has the capability of time travel - you smell a certain smell in the room and it takes you back to your childhood. I feel like music is able to do that, and it happens to me all the time.

I had the naive, simplistic idea that producers and writers and artists of the time helped in a minuscule way to change the mind-set of America.

I learned a long time ago that fame and money is not a ticket to happiness.

I'm somebody who gets a lot of inspiration from dreams.

I do watch 'American Idol' sometimes. It's not really that pleasurable... I take that back. It is the epitome of a guilty pleasure. Sometimes there's some good singers on that show.

I love the sound of Elmore James, the sound early guitarists like him got just by using minimal means.

My grandparents are from Mexico, so I grew up with great Mexican food.

I don't really watch TV series because I don't want to get hooked on them and have them suck up all my time.

I always prefer other people's interpretations over my own, so I'm not very quick to make explicit what exactly a song or record is about.

I get most of my inspiration from older records. Most of the records that I listen to were probably made before I was born, and I was born in the mid-'70s. I don't know why, exactly, I'm drawn to those sounds.

There's a relationship between music and spirituality and inspiration and to a certain extent improvisation that draws me in, because I don't totally understand it. I know that those relationships have been telling me, since I started making records, where to go. What to write down.

I've worked with just as many talented women as I have talented men, and I feel fortunate enough to have that great balance.

I definitely don't see myself as much of a singer, because my upbringing is really based around the guitar, learning chord progressions and that sort of thing. So the singing aspect of what I do has been a secondary adventure.

From a very early age, I started to get really interested in how songs were put to tape. Not just listening to the songs, but the way the songs were recorded.