With songwriting I spend a lot of time living life, accruing all these experiences, journaling, and then by the time I get to the studio I'm teeming with the drive to write.

Typically I go in the studio and whatever I'm contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don't come in with lyrics... I just go in and let it happen.

Breakups are a horrible thing for almost everybody I know. For someone who is a love addict, it's debilitating.

Then I realized that secrecy is actually to the detriment of my own peace of mind and self, and that I could still sustain my belief in privacy and be authentic and transparent at the same time. It was a pretty revelatory moment, and there's been a liberating force that's come from it.

I wish people could achieve what they think would bring them happiness in order for them to realize that that's not really what happiness is.

You live, you learn.

What I try to keep in mind is that there are going to be a lot of articles that are going to be misrepresentative of what I'm about as a person and as a writer.

I guess what people forget sometimes is that when I write songs, I write them sometimes in about 20 minutes.

I happen to be lucky in that I knew what I wanted to do as far as a career since I was nine years old.

I see the whole concept of Generation X implies that everyone has lost hope.

I saw music as a way to entertain people and take them away from their daily lives and put smiles on their faces, as opposed to what I see it being now, which is a way for me to actually communicate, and a way for me to tap into my subconscious.

I was motivated by just thinking that if you had all this external success that everyone would love you and everything would be peaceful and wonderful.

Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn't, I don't really see a point to it.

I try to keep a low profile in general. Not with my art, but just as a person.

I could write six songs in one day with everything that's going on.

Down the road, I'll probably have a kid or two or three. And there will probably be political events or spiritual things to comment on, and humor.

I'll keep evolving and put that into my songs.

The thing I always default to is that I'll always be here to write songs.

I think some fans want everything to stay they same because they want to stay the same.

At one point, I was just perceived as only being angry, but now I'm being perceived as angry, peaceful, and spiritual.

I love songs that are very autobiographical.

I was born in '74, so I missed out on all the great early '60s and early '70s.

At some point, I would like to write a book and other things, but I work best when there is some sort of deadline in my own mind, but not when fifty people or fifty million people are breathing down the back of my neck.

I felt like I was making a record under the radar, and that is my favorite way to do anything.