My dad is obsessed with music, so I was raised around this guitar player that really wanted me to be a guitar player.

It was funny to just take a backseat and be like, 'Wow, I might be in this crazy place, but maybe I don't need to understand everything, maybe I don't need to be someone else.'

The more I know, the more I realise I don't know. And the more I realise I'll never truly understand.

You always know when a real inspiration is behind the melody, arrangements, even lyrics. And I know that's really vague, but it's true.

Raucous drunken trumpets and instrumentation tend to guide the way you think. They can give you a path to follow lyrically.

As a teenager and a young adult, I never felt like my own story was interesting enough to tell, so I always wrote lyrics from someone else's perspective - told someone else's story.

I think that sonically, music speaks volumes more than words do, and I have always thought that and will continue to think that for the rest of my life.

I'm sure that's every adolescent's complaint about their home town. When a city is unstimulating, you get pretty isolated.

I want a song that raises the hair on the back of my neck when I sing it live and I want to feel it every time.

I feel like I've met most people I look up to musically. I just want to meet Chef.

I could probably spend the next five years reworking an album from ten years ago, if given the chance, to make it better - make it best, so to speak.

The nuisance of her presence outweighs the gratification to be derived from tormenting her

When you make a commitment, you build trust. when you keep it, you build trust.

It's best to be ruthless with the past.

Vayoo ansha.”I shook my head and whispered, “Never. For good and always, you have lost me. Na me lapay kahLahn. Not anymore.”**

The trouble with entering the upper echelon is you have to work harder to stay there.

Secrets can remind us of the countless human dramas, of frailty and heroism playing out silently in the lives of people all around us.

The whole visible world is perhaps nothing more than the rationalization of a man who wants to find peace for a moment.

My first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint.

Now I spend hours on headlines - days if necessary. And when I get a good headline, I know that my task is nearly finished.