I rely on swearing just to communicate emotion, but I wanted to express the same feelings [in song] without using curse words.

I don't hate religion, I try not to hate religion. I hate the terrible things that religion makes people do, and I hate the greed that comes from it.

Eventually, I thought that it's interesting to make some rules for yourself while you're working on one project so it sounds different from the other stuff you do.

I love America, and I love living here.

That's almost the best part, making the record cover.

Sometimes bigger cities, just because there's so much going on, people are a little more jaded.

I wish that I myself did have faith in God, that I had a religion, sometimes. But not always.

I'd like to believe there are people who are good, I know there are good Christians and good people from every faith who just want what's best for humanity.

Licensing can be great. You get money for work that's already done. It's not a horrible thing to me, there's just some things I don't want to soundtrack.

I'm not trying to cut myself off from the rest of the culture by not licensing.

I find it a challenge to cooperate in a society where it's considered moral to critique a résumé yet immoral to critique morality.

How could it be that you could love someone so much and keep it secret from yourself as you woke daily so far from home?

I’ve been more places by accident than most people have been on purpose.

At school where you a dunce or a teacher's pet? All of the above. I was stupid so they thought I was cute.

Names govern the world.

Have you ever given someone a book you enjoyed enormously, with a feeling of envy because they were about to read it for the first time, an experience you could never have again?

Lu-cy...you have some s'plainin' to do. ~Gem

Prisons are like the concentration camps of our time. So many go in and never come out, and primarily they're black and Latino.

Life is a thin narrowness of taken-for-granted, a plank over a canyon in a fog.

You must realize that what you are cannot be seen in a mirror. What you see in a mirror is but a dim reflection of your true reality.