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.

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?

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.

One of the things you do in a band is the more you stay together, the more you play to your strengths.

I have found that there is indeed a secret to a happy marriage. It is called perspective.

Intelligence, knowledge or experience are important and might get you a job, but strong communication skills are what will get you promoted.

Music has been my playmate, my lover, and my crying towel.

Art talk is punk. Let the movie do your speaking for you.

You'll hear people say now, 'Oh, I don't want to see something in 3-D. That's wrong, because what they've seen is 3-D done poorly.

Everything that lives, does so under the categorical condition of decisively interfering in the life of someone else.

Nothing is going to happen to you if you throw salt on the floor, stand under a ladder, or see eight black cats on the street.

Vocations are born in prayer and from prayer; and only in prayer can they persevere and bear fruit.

Sometimes, a wife must do what her husband cannot.

Just because you couldn't do it yesterday doesn't mean you can't do it today.