My wife is very happy about me keeping all my music in my pocket.

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?

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.

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.

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States . . .

There is no sin in the realm of taste.

People of God are always people who care about other people and it always comes at some cost.

One of the things that is interesting about reading conspiracy theory is that much of what folks think is conspiracy is really many people acting in concert to make or protect their money.

The key is for the audience never to know, so I have a plan B for every illusion.

I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going, and an arrow of longing.

Why should we be startled by death? Life is a constant putting off of the mortal coil - coat, cuticle, flesh and bones, all old clothes.

We've been working on a new album, which is going to come out next spring, which is very different, a change of style for us - it's going to be almost like rock music.

George Harrison was known as the quiet Beatle. Quiet people are often quiet because they are deep thinkers.

Progress would be wonderful - if only it would stop.