I don't worry so much about whether people are buying my music or getting it for free.

I believe that most people aren't that different from one another. Although we might appear to be different on the surface, I think ultimately we all go through the same struggles.

I write very personal songs. Subject matter is usually derived from some internal struggle that I am having.

The most important thing is writing songs that resonate and giving people a chance to listen to them.

I just try to stay honest with myself and in doing that I feel like the songs are going to resonate.

When I deal with my struggles in my songs, I feel like most people are going to identify with my struggles because they are essentially dealing with the same things.

In many ways my writing is like therapy. It is my way of dealing with things.

When I think about my career and how it all started, it really started with me getting to a point where I understood how to write songs that resonated with people.

I think people just want to hear good songs and I just want to keep getting better as a writer so that I can deliver good songs.

I believe that people want to hear good songs and they want to be moved.

Athens, much like Austin, is a difficult music scene. There are so many musicians there that it is hard to get gigs and hard for people to take you seriously.

Iraq is a fabricated state that has failed. It has always been a failure. It exists on the map. On the map, it has some borders, but these borders weren’t drawn naturally.

The quarrels of lovers are like summer storms. Everything is more beautiful when they have passed.

I presented my feminine side with flowers. She cutthe stems and placed them gently down my throat.And these tu lips might soon eclipse your brightesthopes.

For, to conceited men, all other men are admirers.

Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it — that is what you must do.

The only time I ever met a character that I wrote was when I met Ian McKellan, when he was playing Magneto in the 'X-Men' movies.

I no longer scramble blindly through hardship. I no longer emerge from a bad time feeling relieved just to have survived. Instead of despairing, I try to find the lesson within the experience.

The day of fortune is like a harvest day, We must be busy when the corn is ripe. [Ger., Ein tag der Gunst ist wie ein Tag der Ernte, Man muss geschaftig sein sobald sie reift.]

All art is a memory of age-old things, dark things, whose fragments live on in the artist.