I didn't have the patience for the research, or anything like that. I just like how it sets the imagination off. It's just an area that's very fertile for great words. Great metaphors, potentially.

Most of the songs that I appreciate are lyrically vague.

You can build up expectations for a song before you record it, and then it's like nothing's good enough in the studio.

When I start asking my friends, "What do you think this means?" And it leads to way more interesting conversations than what it actually ends up meaning in the dictionary. Like "apocryphal," for instance.

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 way I work, I'm not a confessional singer-songwriter.

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