When I did do good stuff in the past, it was because I was able to transcend the parts of my being that weren't healthy.

Everything alive must die. Every building built to the sky will fall. Don't try to tell me my everlasting love is a lie.

I don't like being in public with headphones on. I don't know how people can do it. It seems like you're so cut off from your environment. I feel like I'd get hit by a car.

What you once were isn't what you want to be anymore.

I still love poetic imagery. I love the idea of using surrealist speak to generate lyrical content and I love the way English can be exciting in and of itself.

You have to learn how to die if you wanna be alive.

Anybody who'd expend energy preventing people from hearing music seems not to understand the basic principal of making music in the first place. It's so antithetical to being a musician.

Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator.

I really enjoy playing solo acoustic. I think it's good for me as a songwriter to stay in touch with what it takes to make a song work by yourself.

Writing songs has always been hard and easy. It's not always easy when you want it to be, and then sometimes it's just like turning on the faucet. That's just the nature of it.

We live in a connected world now. Some find that frightening. If people are downloading our music, they're listening to it. The internet is like radio for us.

Those who recite prayers do not pray from their heart but are heard to say the words of the prayers that someone wrote down some time ago.

You need to trust God so you can trust others.

John McCain was a prisoner of war.

We moderns do not believe in demigods, but our smallest hero we expect to feel and act as a demigod.

Poetry isn't an efficient tool for preserving experience, any more than it's an efficient mode of communication, but who says that it should be efficient?

My problem with being in New York City is that you really can't make a living as a comedian. You can, but you have to also take writing jobs, which means less stage time.

You can fight a porcupine and win, but if other folks get a look at you they may think it's a bad idea to mess with porcupines.

The mirror we hold up to the person next to us is one of the most important pictures she will ever see.

I learned to write with my desk in the living room, next to the TV. But mostly in my head, and I try to be able to do it under any circumstances.

Justice is the one thing you should always find.