It's like you don't know you're making a record unless you're half-killing yourself.

Playing the violin and singing and whistling are just three different ways of making sound.

Honestly, I didn't have the patience for biology or history in an academic sense, but I always liked the kind of big questions.

Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.

The melodies come out so strong that I'm like, "Oh, crap." It's really better if they could both be kind of able to compromise, but the melodies, even more recently, they come out very fully cast and formed.

This might be a controversial thing to suggest, but in a quest to understand and relate to terrorism or school shootings, sometimes it feels like it's real, the appeal. As we've seen with ISIS, it's not always the devout who are getting into it; it's just people looking for a sense of belonging. The more they feel they're up against, the more intensity the cause has. It's an epic clash of cultures, and both sides are playing that up, but it's human beings disaffected, detached, and lonely.

If you take a little time, let's say three weeks off, after recording a song, and you listen to it every other day, you're just going to know eventually.