I like simple writing. I'd rather read Hemingway than Burroughs.

I never want to listen to the songs in front of people close to me. There's an emotional honesty in that place where it's not earnest but it's vulnerable.

I'm definitely preoccupied by thinking I'm just a biological thing. I want to feel that there's more, but so often I'm reminded of how we're just like baboons, basically.

Music was my friend when I was a teenager, and I would inhabit and take comfort in lyrics. That's how I want to write.

I started growing roses. I enjoyed the craft of it and that they're difficult to look after; they can provide joy.

I like the fervor of religious music, the zealous aspect - that preachers can go from a conversational cadence into this passionate singing.

When you're making an album with people who made your favorite records as a rebellious teenager, it feels like you've achieved something.

You can get into a comfort zone writing lyrics, like wearing a mask. But I wanted to feel uncomfortable when I was listening back to the lyrics; I wanted to squirm.

I was definitely inspired by gospel music, or old-school R&B I got into some Good God gospel compilations.

I'm just worn down and weary of bands whose lyrics are cryptic and self-referential.

I'm appalled by the tendency of some rock records to perfect everything to the point where it sounds like Botox and polish it so heavily that there's no humanity left in it.

Unhappy parents teach you a lesson that lasts a lifetime.

I can't go against my nature because I am what I am. I don't try to be anyone different to who I am.

American science is much more organized, much more hierarchical than British science has been.

Listen less to your own thoughts and more to God's thoughts.

I don't have any control over what other people do, and they don't represent me or my faith.

We cannot be sure that we ought not to regard the most criminal country as that which in some aspects possesses the highest civilization.

More whites believe in ghosts than believe in racism.

I'm usually the yes guy, and I had to turn into a no guy.

The eye that directs a needle in the delicate meshes of embroidery will equally well bisect a star with the spiderweb of the micrometer.

I never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.