There's always a tension between wanting to write a really concise, instant gratification type song that gets under your skin the first time you hear it, and wanting to really stretch out. I think it's a healthy tension.

Songwriting requires some sort of ceremony to even get the process started, and it can be somewhat arbitrary.

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.

There's been this perception that Europeans still hold on to, that they discover the real talented ones in American culture and give them proper credit and that's not true anymore - it used to be. A lot of jazz musicians would get respect in Europe.

I am, in some sense, a writer. Even though I kinda downplay the word thing, I do enjoy writing sometimes.

Songwriters can sort of get away with murder. You can throw out crazy theories and not have to back it up with data or graphs or research.

People who are thinking about your music almost as much as you are, that almost never happens.