To outsiders it probably seems like splitting hairs, but to me, Bright Eyes is a simply the collaboration between myself and Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott. What you hear is definitely the sum of all our ideas and represents all three of us. But I still write the songs myself.

Everything that happens is supposed to be And it's all pre-determined, can't change your destiny Guess I'll just keep moving, someday maybe I'll get to where I'm going

We're all too busy working, entertaining ourselves With forty hours, television and prescription pills Well, I take two a day to help my brain behave It never does, but who's to say? At least my doctor gets paid.

On every Bright Eyes record, there's some kind of sound collage that begins it. Some of them have dialogue, some don't. I like it because it can kind of slow down the attention span a bit. It's a way to draw you in to the rest of the record.

People resist change; if they like something, then they want you to keep doing it over and over - but I think if you like what a particular band or artist does, then you should want to see what they're going to do next.

You can only really understand good if you have bad, so the idea of heaven or anything that happens for eternity, even if it's nice, I can't imagine it being nice forever. Even the idea of forever is kind of ridiculous, which is unfortunate because it's kind of a nice thing to say, you know.

Pronouns really don't matter in a song - 'I' or 'he' or 'she' or even subscribing a lyric to an inanimate object.