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

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

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.

Installing massive amounts of wireless devices into every city may eventually be proven to be a global weather modification system.

Architecture doesn't come from theory. You don't think your way through a building.

I shoot reality-based movies, and in actual locations, shooting them with a star is next to impossible.

It is much more sensible to be an optimist instead of a pessimist, for if one is doomed to disappointment, why experience it in advance?

If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn't, maybe you need a different publisher.

Too many artists and writers have forgotten their roots. I embrace my fans because, in a way, they're family.

Great wars can only be fought by great powers.

I do a great deal of research, especially in the apartments of tall blondes.

Things are only impossible until somebody does what another believes can't be done.

You get up and, first thing in the morning, you do your 500 words. Do it every day and you’ve got a book in eight or nine months.