I think you want to write a song that's like the songs you are into.

It's good to have some kind of California in there. It's almost always appropriate. It's appropriate on a sunny day or late at night. If you grew up on the Grateful Dead, which I certainly did, you listened to 10 million bootlegs. But you realize that American Beauty has some really tight, well-arranged songs that aren't meandering.

One of the things you do in a band is the more you stay together, the more you play to your strengths.

I don't have a problem rhyming "bar" with "car" - I do it all the time - but sometimes it doesn't feel right.

As a writer, if you have something on a page, you can start moving it around and get something you like. But if you have a blank page, it's just gonna be a blank page.

I think the other thing that shaped me a little bit is that I really didn't have any success in music until my early to mid-30s.

If you wait four or five years between records, it better be a masterpiece, you know? And if you keep putting them out, you're saying, 'Hey, here's 10 more songs'.