Songwriting can be cathartic, but then you just keep it private. If you're going to play out and have other people listen to you, then you need to make sure there's some point to what you're saying.

You can be for something and still be damaged by it.

I'm lucky enough that people tend to agree a lot with what I say. But really if anyone in the band has a really strong feeling, it carries a lot of weight.

I'm more interested in writing about the personal stories of people. Sometimes I don't agree with them.

The road does not always bring out the best in people.

I feel like, as a people, we're sort of stumbling in the dark right now.

Paste may be the last great American music magazine left.

I've always thought preaching to the converted is just kind of futile and silly.

Racism is a worldwide problem.

A lot of the music that I grew up loving has a really political bent to it.

I dislike Bush as much as probably anybody on earth could, but having said that... It's not like I'm going to change anybody's mind.

Everything that is good in the day is even better in the night.

Instead of loving people and using money, people often love money and use people.

I became a jazz fan quite early and never went off the path thereafter.

Most of the time I've worked with directors who write their own scripts. The story is more important to me than the part. The project of the film has always been more important to me.

Nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks. Fall forward. Every failed experiment is one step closer to success.

People are really concerned with what other people are saying about them.

We realize that if we live in a world that depends totally on CBS.com, we'd be dead.

I don't like the idea of competition - maybe because I kept losing them when I was a kid. Maybe it's better to be the one who loses?

You know... the only person I really had to please after a point was the MPAA. Because Lions' Gate was like, hey, whatever you can get away with is fine, we don't care.

I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon.