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

The first splurge of creativity is kind of free, and the last 30 percent is painstakingly hard work, but it's good to light a fire and make it public and create that expectation. It's become part of the writing process, really, a way to ask the audience what they think, how they think it's going. I can't write songs in a vacuum.

I have some irrepressible pop impulses to write an appealing, concise song. And I also have some irrepressible kind of restlessness as well, and I need to keep myself interested. When I'm left to my own devices, there's a struggle.

I think I'm still a little too intense for my own good sometimes.

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

With digital sound just becomes simply information, not the sum of its parts.

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