One thing I have a tendency to do is not write choruses, or write choruses that have different words. The first chorus will have different words than the second chorus.

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.

There isn’t a viler creature on earth than a politician who sends the children of others to the war but not his own children!

Yeah, my father is an egotistical douchebag, " he says roughly. "My name literally means Jonathan empire.

The USPS is the only place in the world where you will find a black guy, a white guy, and a hispanic guy playing Filipino poker! And we love it that way!

The Constitution is America's glue, Democracy is the Constitution's glue.

I've got a very peculiar sort of fame, based on being on the telly. It doesn't mean you have the lifestyle people expect.

On Stranger Than Fiction, the script was so good that I stuck to every line because it was just such brilliant writing from Zach Helm that I felt like I really just want to shoot the page.

Vulgarity is innocent; urbanity is not.

These vessels are out of sight, out of mind. They are exempt from minimum-wage requirements, from Coast Guard inspections, OSHA regulations and other safety laws.

I set as my goal to be the best dancer I could be. Not the most famous, or the highest paid dancer, just the best I could be. Out of this discipline came great freedom and calm.

Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.