My pain is usually caused by some sort of attack on my ego. So usually, pain is an indication of something that, eventually, I'm going to want to transcend. But sometimes pain is just pain that you sit through. I find it can have a really exhilarating effect.

In my heart, I'm always in my rail-hosen.

To me, what I define as defiance, in some ways, is knowing the "reality" and having the ability to possess a realist mindstate yet still working towards the fantasy and still being childish. While still having the understanding and capacity that would generally inspire pessimism: some sort of more realist perspective that I think most people classify as adult. Anything like that and anything that's sort of fun.

The main thing that I've learned, artistically, is that if I'm in pain and feeling the budding of anger - if I absolutely feel like I need to write a song about it, I'll either need to transform that anger into something positive, or I'll just need to throw the song away. Because eventually, I'm going to want to transcend that pain and that anger.

When you're comfortable, you're not necessarily inclined to care about things that are contributing to your comfort. It's difficult.

Physical pain is problematic because it's very difficult to transcend that. Sometimes you're just in physical pain, and that's a bummer. Even then, there are beautiful things involved in the healing of that. I've experienced some.

I think that when you're open, you're at your most powerful.