I feel like a quote out of context, withholding the rest so I can be for you what you want to see.

A lot of 18-year-olds are like old men. They think they've seen everything.

I divorce myself from listeners who aren't tolerant of humor. I did notice universally that, especially when it comes to weight, people look in the mirror and get the angle just right, tell themselves it's all right, and then they go out.

If the melody is telling me this is what the song is about, then I'm sort of forced into confession, autobiography or fantasy. If I don't do that, I've hamstrung the melody.

In many ways, I've chosen to be plain, almost too plain, too self-effacing. Like, if I record a vocal and I don't like the way it sounds, I would have them turn it up and take the reverb off it to make it as plain as possible.

What stupid f - king idiot gets married a second time if the first time didn't work out?

It's a tough thing to know that when you're making your album, you're going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.