There's somewhat of a real fascination with American bands and American mythology in London.

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.

Christianity in its ideas was never the art of the possible.

The breeding programs for the bulls have improved significantly. The bulls are at a much higher caliber.

You've got to keep the stage world and your real world separated or you're headed for trouble.

We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.

About the only thing we have left that actually discriminates in favor of the plain people is the stork.

Only if we are capable of dwelling, only then can we build

The grace of God is a wind which is always blowing.

When I was young, people were almost identified solely by the kind of music they liked. People fell into categories of who liked what.

When everyone is trying to be something, be nothing. Range with emptiness. Human should be like a pot. As the pot is hold by its emptiness inside, human is hold by the awareness of his nothingness.