Knowing record labels and knowing the kinds of things they would object to-they just object to everything that's interesting.

Telling what you feel, trying to talk about what's important to you, does not make you weaker.

But I can't confront the doubts I have. I can't admit that maybe the past was bad, and so, for the sake of momentum I'm condemning the future to death so it can match the past.

I don't consider myself a great writer, but I would like to think that I can at least proof- read.

It's funny, because my last record was a lot about isolation and people living in separate worlds that other people can't even understand, which drug addiction is the perfect negative example of.

There's a lot of music that sounds like it's literally computer-generated, totally divorced from a guy sitting down at an instrument.

It really doesn't matter to me what people say about me anymore.

Everyone's just extracting meaning and feeling and emotion from almost every aspect of music, and I think that for me, it's a huge antidote to that to have a concept album.

When things are really great, it just means everything's in it's place.

I wanted to try to write songs on the piano to get a different flavor.

Better take the keys and drive forever. Staying won't put these futures back together. All the perfect drugs and superheroes wouldn't be enough to bring me back to zero.

Life seemed to him to be a narrow cage, and her iron bars were many and dense, and there was only one way out.

It's unlimited what we can do through Christ.

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.

After I convinced them that I was a harmless novelist, I actually got them to give me a tour of the harem - which is usually off limits for tourists.

You appreciate things after you lose them.

The multiple failings of our flawed financial sector are jeopardizing, not only the retirement security of our nation's savers but the economy in which our entire society participates.

Everybody has a stunt except me. Every single person has a stunt, but I don't have a stunt, there's nothing. No wire, no pulling. I try to get in on the danger, but there's nothing.

A maxim is the exact and noble expression of an important and indisputable truth. Good maxims are the germs of all excellence; when firmly fixed on the memory, they nourish the will.

I think it's undignified to read for the purposes of escape. After you grow up, you should start reading for other purposes

I understand the all black or all white look (to be perfectly blunt, it's easy and you don't have to think about it very much) but would any of us really want to be one of those people?