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

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

I'm just trying to get my body in shape so that I can handle it. It's a very physically demanding thing. I've been doing it for 16 years, so I know what I'm going into now. I'm trying to stay calm and not panic.

I'm a terrible Scrabble player.

Some of your best songs come from a desperate attempt to escape, so sitting in an airport for hours I can just start pulling out little fragments of songs from my head. A lot of times a melody will just occur to me and be my companion for a couple of months.

I'm not a home-studio guy. I spend a lot of time working by myself developing songs, but I really need some other counterpart to help me pull it all together, because you go nuts working if I had to finish an entire project all within my own head.

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.