Putting your ego aside and confronting your weaknesses and just letting things happen is hard. Not to use a Scientology term, but it's difficult to do an emotional or an artistic audit.

CDs are usually an hour long because that's the amount a CD could hold - not because that's the optimal amount of time for any given musical expression.

I had brief glimpses of emotional catharsis while writing. I remember reading something Philip Roth wrote about how he writes every single day, but it's almost as if he has amnesia every morning - he has almost zero confidence that anything will come but he just sits down and plugs away. And at the end of the day it feels like a miracle: "How did I do that?" I had a similar experience where it was just about putting in the hours and being present.

I got offstage and was just looking at my hands, and they were shaking. I was like, 'I wanna kill someone! What's happening?'

I have a phobia of checking voicemail. I watched a lot of TV as a kid, and everything is, like, you're gonna get kidnapped, or somebody's gonna die, or killer bees are going to take you out. I'm a very anxious person.

I think every time I play, every show is different, and I think that at a certain point a song isn't about you anymore. It's about the audience, it's about how the song has worked its way into other people's lives and that kind of keeps the meaning of the song new, because you see it reflected in other people every night.

I'm first and foremost a guitar player. I've been playing since I was 12, which is over half of my life.