When people hit on feeling a certain melancholy or elation, it's a really exciting moment. I think making that connection is the goal, and what makes something great.

A conversation with you is a different thing than projecting to a couple hundred people. It's bigger and more animated and it's on a bigger scope, but still in the heart, it's honestly me.

One of the coolest things to me about going to a show is you look over, and the guy next to you is sitting there drinking a beer and he's wearing a Donkeys t-shirt. And you're like, "Dude, I love The Donkeys."

Words and music together create powerful, powerful things.

I think the biggest thing - and this I think is true of songs but also of movies and books and art in general - is when you have this moment where you hear a song or whatever and you say, "Hey, I've felt that exact way as a human being," and there's no easy way to describe it.

I don't really pursue writing songs for other people. I guess one of the things I always think about is a good line in a song should be something I can hear myself saying.

One thing I have a tendency to do is not write choruses, or write choruses that have different words. The first chorus will have different words than the second chorus.