I'm more focused as a singer and hands-on with music and more exacting, and less trying to furiously fit a thousands thoughts into a four minute song.

I always start with the lyrics, because starting with the music means the words will be bad.

I can't fool myself into thinking that musically I don't need other people, whether it's as a foil or just to come in and make real the ideas that are kind of vague and wispy in my head.

I'm not really sure that I have the same definition of things as other people. Like, when people talk about being "engaged" with the audience, I'm not exactly sure what they mean.

I don't banter with the audience, cause I don't have anything to say to them, and I'm not feeling any sense of ease or camaraderie when I'm on stage.

I like putting common expressions next to uncommon expressions. I'm sure in Poetry 101 there is a name for it, but it seems like you usually go one way or the other in rock music.

Kaputt was just a record that did really well for us, and therefore our record label and our booking agent said that we should go out and take our message to the world.

The more I abandon ideas of myself as a musician, the better a singer I become.

Once you feel like you can safely quit a melody, you are free to explore more important things.

I've never had any kind of work ethic. I've never sat down with the intention of writing a song.

I'm just kind of lazy and messed up and self-managed - self-mismanaged.

We may just be specters in this world, but our stories, if they are remembered and retold, become real and solid and alive... Once you hear a story, it becomes part of you. It can't die.

For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.

I really want to play Princess Leia. Stick some big pastries on my head. Now that would be interesting.

Where there's marriage without love there will be love without marriage.

Don't you ever change your theology to line up with your doubt.

I've never seen the devil create music.

Young poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.

There can be no society without poetry, but society can never be realized as poetry, it is never poetic. Sometimes the two terms seek to break apart. They cannot.

If not for the cost burdens of fear we would all be living in paradise

To laugh, to lie, to flatter, to face: Four ways in court to win man's grace.