I think you want to write a song that's like the songs you are into.

People make maps of all the places I've mentioned. I knew that those people were out there. I wanted to create something for them.

There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right / Boys and Girls in America / Have such a sad time together.

I really like narrative songs, but I wonder if that's a thing for some people. Once they've heard the story, do they really need to hear the story again?

I'm able to draw outside my own personal experiences. No one wants to hear the song about what I really did today, which is go get coffee and clean my apartment.

When people hit on feeling a certain melancholy or elation, it's a really exciting moment. I think making that connection is the goal, and what makes something great.

Sometimes things reveal themselves to you a little bit. I think it was Joan Didion that said, "We write to find out what we're thinking." And sometimes that happens.

I would never talk to a girl in a bar, like a pick-up thing. But I could talk to anyone if they wore a t-shirt of a band I like.

Just looking into something kind of analytically can give a lot of ideas.

People think of songwriting as a very personal thing: A guy gets up there with an acoustic guitar and he sings his heart out, bares his soul.

One of the things is my process requires a lot of repetition. I can probably drive people crazy because I'm interested in playing a song twenty times in a row.

It may be small comfort, but I believe Rafe doesn't want to kill you." A light laugh escaped her lips. "Actually, that is a substantial comfort.

Global consciousness is that thing responsible for deciding that pots containing decaffeinated coffee should be orange.

My idols were Michael Jackson and The Beatles and I would watch Justin Timberlake and John Mayer perform and I knew I wanted to do what they were doing!

When I finally realized that I didn't want to be a butch, I wanted to sleep with a butch, a whole new world opened up before my eyes.

The mirror sees the man as beautiful, the mirror loves the man; another mirror sees the man as frightful and hates him; and it is always the same being who produces the impressions.

Most rappers these days is actors, And I can't keep watching the same movie.

You know, you throw rocks in the lake and scientists will tell you you're raising the level of the lake, but all you get to see is the ripple.

At times on quiet waters one does not speak aloud but only in whispers, for then all noise is sacrilege.

I imagine that all Americans have a unique relationship in their individual present to their collective past and how that relationship might shape their identities and experiences.