I grew up with a rotary phone in my house and that seems a world away, but that's what I was used to as a kid. So now things seem complicated to me, but to kids born right now, they don't feel complicated.

There's going to be ups and downs and that you have to be okay with the downs too and embrace them just as much because they will teach you something.

I think books are just a great ticket to get you outside of yourself. You can not be you for a second and live in the shoes of a character, which is a special thing.

There's when a phrase circles in my head in a number of ways for any number of days, weeks, or months, and then that eventually becomes a song. There's a slow permeation of the idea and then that leads into a bunch of themes and becomes a bunch of lines.

If the point of good art is to be somewhat subtle then it's not going to catch everyone.

I don't necessarily think I look to books for ideas, but sometimes when I'm in the process of reading a great book, I just think about it all of the time.

I was an English major in university and that got me into novels, but I read a lot of books as a kid.