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

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

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.

When you ask God for a gift, Be thankful if he sends, Not diamonds, pearls or riches, but the love of real true friends.

Photographs shock insofar as they show something novel.

We seem to be afflicted by a widespread and eroding reluctance to take any stand on any values, moral, behavioral or esthetic.

We all have a right to know, and if the government has been suppressing information about other life forms, that's the cruelest hoax of all.

There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.

I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them...they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable.

I don't think I have ever created an entire fiction piece or followed a historical piece and made that into a sermon.

One of the most considerable advantages the great have over their inferiors is to have servants as good as themselves.

The marks won't listen if it's free.

Music was born of love. Had there never been any human affection, there never could have been uttered a strain of music.