Some of my earlier songs are kind of more about mental illness.

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.

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

The real drag is trying to fly from country to country, day of show, with all your gear. You get hassled all the time. It's hard trying to keep it together.

There's always that struggle between me wanting to keep [song] new and fresh and then be - I can never get with pop songs being so repetitive.

The weirdest time is when I'm having to explain myself all day to journalists, and then I don't perform, so there's no release, just a lot of self-consciousness. Then what do you do with that at the end of the day? How do you release your brain from talking about yourself all day?

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