At certain point, you realize it's easy to play music for the rest of your life: just don't sell your guitar. Maybe you get a day job, but as long as you have a guitar, you can play.

There was no indie rock band in the 90s at the level of, like, Grizzly Bear. I listen to their records and it's crazy how good they sound. That really freaks me out.

There are bands, like R.E.M., who want to have 17 records, and some are terrible and some are great. I don't know if people think like that anymore. Things are more atomized now.

I'm a total ho for any writing workshop, any technique from anyone.

I like to write early in the morning, like, 5 a.m. If I'm really on my game, I don't have any coffee or stimulants. I'm kind of in a dream state.

I wanted to be a writer when I was a little kid. Then I wanted to be Pete Townshend - the songwriting guitarist who occasionally sang.

There's a lot of griping and groaning about wanting to play half-baked new songs live, but you don't want it to just end up on YouTube with like 74 thumbs down: "This is the worst!"

I like to go play shows just to see people, so I'm not in the game of like, "You're at my show, you're gonna listen to it like this, blah blah blah."

Your ego gets activated real quick, you really want to impress yourself. But when you come back to it, sometimes you're like, "Yeah, this part? I don't know. This guy needs a lot of help."

I saw an interview with Jay-Z where he said he didn't write down any of his lyrics, so I tried that.

I try to be patient. I feel like the point of art is to go down within yourself and to pop up into other people. If you're lucky, all of a sudden you're like, "whoop!" You're in other people.

The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.

People think you have only to ‘tell’ a person that he ‘ought’ to do something in order to put him on the right track. But whether he can or will do it is another matter.

Philosophically, war is an extension of man’s struggle with sin and evil in the world.

I have a 6-year-old niece who doesn't look like the majority of girls on the covers of magazines. I hope that by the time she's 16, the world will have changed.

When things happen to you in the worst way, you live with it, you go over it, you think, 'What else could I have done?

Better to be screwed physically than financially.

You know, to address crowds and make promises does not require very much brains.

Let the fires go out in the boiler room of the church and the place will still look smart and clean, but it will be cold. The Prayer Room is the boiler room for its spiritual life.

Canadians want a country. They don't want a community of communities. I'm committed to the national unity of the country.

The lover is made happier by his love than the object of his affection.