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

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.

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.

One of the things you do in a band is the more you stay together, the more you play to your strengths.

When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers.

Do what you feel is right and good. There will always be haters and naysayers..and their problem..is just that..their problem!

It's time we learned the truth about stress. It's time we identified the thoughts that actually create our stress and learned to dismantle them one by one.

Love based upon money and vanity forms the most stubborn of passions.

I’m never without a bandage.

The guy that's holding the ball gets hit a lot. Sometimes he gets banged up. We feel very comfortable with Jason.

The greatest discoveries are those that shed light unto ourselves.

We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow

That was one problem with dramatic exits: Sometimes they wound up making you look like a bubblehead.