I think people just want to hear good songs and I just want to keep getting better as a writer so that I can deliver good songs.

I believe that most people aren't that different from one another. Although we might appear to be different on the surface, I think ultimately we all go through the same struggles.

I write very personal songs. Subject matter is usually derived from some internal struggle that I am having.

I don't worry so much about whether people are buying my music or getting it for free.

The most important thing is writing songs that resonate and giving people a chance to listen to them.

I just try to stay honest with myself and in doing that I feel like the songs are going to resonate.

When I deal with my struggles in my songs, I feel like most people are going to identify with my struggles because they are essentially dealing with the same things.

In many ways my writing is like therapy. It is my way of dealing with things.

When I think about my career and how it all started, it really started with me getting to a point where I understood how to write songs that resonated with people.

I believe that people want to hear good songs and they want to be moved.

Athens, much like Austin, is a difficult music scene. There are so many musicians there that it is hard to get gigs and hard for people to take you seriously.

The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt.

Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.

The ultimate luxury is to reread: to revisit a book to see how time has treated it, how memory has distorted it, or how my own passing years have cast a new light on it.

Progress has a steep price. Success has an even steeper price. Your team won't be willing to pay it if you aren't willing to pay it.

Don't you know, priests, why our sermons do not touch the people's heart? Because we do not preach to the eyes, only to the ears.

Art isn't about following the rules. It's about breaking them.

Two things are terrible in childhood: helplessness (being in other people's power) and apprehension - the apprehension that something is being concealed from us because it is too bad to be told.

A half-truth does more mischief than a whole lie.

All I needed was a friend to lend a guiding hand. But you turned into a lover, and mother what a lover, you wore me out.

To speak highly of one with whom we are intimate is a species of egotism. Our modesty as well as our jealousy teaches us caution on this subject.