The reality is that the shows kind of disconnect from the songs a little bit. You're playing the songs, but they take on a life of their own.

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's no doubt in my mind that he wants this and that he loves you, Sam, but sometimes even the strongest feelings in our hearts can't silence the demons in our head.

There is a rest that comes when you live out of your sound. Silence is no longer something to be avoided. It signifies a soul at rest.

You can't treat Russia like a guilty schoolboy who has to put a cross on a piece of paper to show he has done his homework. That kind of language is unacceptable.

Everybody has their burdens, their grief that they carry with them.

A short story is simplification to the highest degree

The children-my own and other people's-became the passion of my personal and professional life.

Only that, nothing more - a tiny beam of light to show some hidden aspect of reality, to help decipher and understand it and thus to initiate, if possible, a change in the conscience of some readers.

What would the world look like if we asked ourselves the following more often; are our actions helping others find a way to feel more freer, more dignified and more beautiful?

Because Christianity is a religion of death, it could be treated with the utmost realism, and it could have its orgies, just likethe old religion of nature and life.