I hope people hear my songs and realize that writing music is kind of easy, or that taking your sadness and turning it into a beautiful song is worthwhile.

I played piano for a lot of my childhood and stupidly quit. I wish I hadn't - I could have been a great classical pianist!

I was thinking about New York and realized how much I hate walking around in the winter and how much I dread getting on the train.

I'm trying to do what Frank O'Hara did and remind myself there there's a lot of good stuff. I write about New York for my own mental health.

Everyone on the Internet is sad. Why else would they be on the Internet?

You meet a lot of people in New York who are different than you, and have different stories, so I see everyone as super individual.

I started going to rock shows at a really young age, and seeing other young people make music definitely influenced me.

My music doesn't sound punk, but I see it as a punk action.

Writing songs about it is a really useful way for me to love New York more, and stay observing it, and not just zone it out.

When I was younger, my view of New York was really wide-eyed and excited. I've lived here all my life.

I feel like the cosmos implies mystery, or infinite secrets.

There's an old adage, " he said, "translated from the ancient Coptic, that contains all the wisdom of the ages -- "Life is life and fun is fun, but it's all so quiet when the goldfish die.

Why did I come here? I thought. Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse?

I feel like there is an emphasis against teaching geography in American schools. Americans don't say, "I'm going to Germany." They say, "I'm going to Europe."

The American people have the right to know and understand the laws they live under. And they tend to demand answers sooner or later.

Scripts are corny and predictable. Real life is always better.

I think death is a tremendous adventure- a gateway into a new life, in which you have further powers, deeper joys, and wonderful horizons.

Better to kill an innocent by mistake than spare an enemy by mistake.

I'm a huge Obama fan. I think it's such an unbelievably great thing to have a President who's competent and not insane.

As long as experiencing your optimal level of good stress doesn't damage others, it's hard to objectively define where normal enjoyment of stimulation becomes adrenaline junkiehood.

Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.