The more you release records, in some ways it takes pressure off you.

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.

The mystery religions were instituted in order to protect the marvels of the commonplace from those who would devalue them.

Throw an idea into the world and its impact will ripple and reverberate beyond your side of the shore.

If your hunch proves a good one, you were inspired; if it proves bad, you are guilty of yielding to thoughtless impulse.

Priestley [said] that each discovery we make shows us many others that should be made.

To spend a life in dreams, that sounded too lovely.

To overcome any sort of fear is satisfying, and to overcome it well is even better.

A bird in a cage is not half a bird.

Since you would save none of me, I bury some of you.

The smallest annoyances, disturb us the most.

Great food needed more than chefs; it needed gourmet diners.