It's so rare that I'll read or even watch an interview. I don't want to, either. I don't want to see other people's comments.

I think the most important thing to remember is that pain passes. And artistically, the pain is going to pass. It's what you want to express out of the pain as opposed to indulging in the agony-and-pain mantra of songwriting that became such a hit in the '90s and still, all the way up to now.

I get very heated about anything that is socially unkind.

Recording music is not really the healthiest thing for the body.

I don't want an angry song with no silver lining ending up on my album. Then I'd have to play, or feel obliged to play, that song every night in repetition as a mantra of anger.

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.

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.