I really think it's a white, bourgeois idea to pretend that you don't have influences. It seems to be the obsession strictly of white people in college.

I think I kind of approached music with this sort of, like, weird thing where I kinda set myself up where I could kinda be myself but not really. I kinda had a backdoor out. So if you criticized me, I kinda had my defenses working. And the problem is that some people seize on that as inauthenticity, which is understandable. So that's painful because it's not that you're being inauthentic...there's a difference between being a poseur and being someone who's so emotionally challenged they're kind of just doing their best to show you what they've got.

People always seemed to pay attention to us. I have no idea why -- there was just a presence between the four people or something.

I'm like the Fugitive, running from the one-armed indie-rock community!

When alternative music - which is supposed to be the standard-bearer of where white rock is headed - becomes either too cute or too manufactured, that's just really not good.

I want to be able to look back and think that as long as I was going this, I did the best that I could.

Life is everything and nothing all at once.