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 can predict with some sense of certainty how life will feel in a month. I can with the same logic remember with the same element of reality or truth what life was like a month ago. All perspectives on the past are entirely relative.

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.

The idea that things intrinsically were just better is so stupid to me because they never were. It's all relative.

I feel like songwriting changed from something that I liked doing to something that, I feel, is a very important outlet for me to digest all the things around me. Once I put thoughts into a song, I can let it go, it doesn't bug me anymore you know what I mean? It's kind of a catharsis.

More than anything, being an English major made me more appreciative of authors and what an incredible feat it is to just finish a novel, let alone a really brilliant one.

It's not supposed to make you distracted from your life, it's supposed to make you challenge the ongoing distraction with focused intention. Simply discussing how asleep we can be gives credence to the possibility of finding moments of true honest alertness.