An adolescent is somebody who is in between things. A teenager is somebody who's kind of permanently there. And so living with them through the various teenage hopes and sorrows and joys was curiously enough a maturing experience for me.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

I was never a teenager. I became a teenager in Christ the King and I never grew out of it. More seriously... as I'm always serious as you know, there weren't teenagers in the late 1930s and early 1940s. There were adolescents. But by the time I was ordained and was dumped into Beverly, there were teenagers.

We were very close, and we shared each others' joys and sorrows.

I want to be as honest as I can about the things I've been through - the sorrows and joys, victories and defeats - and to use those experiences as a well to draw from. Hopefully, the songs that result from that kind of writing will be songs that mean something to others.

The real friend is he or she who can share all our sorrows and double our joys.