I am not a good enough writer to have an agenda or come up with a message and try to put it into a song. It's more like you write what comes to you... You try to reflect the mood of the songs.

I'm trying to break any chain of negative parenting that I might have survived.

I get really worried, like if they say, 'Take vocal lessons,' or something because it's kind of like I used to really love to draw when I was a kid and then I took like an art class - because everyone said, 'Oh, you're so good, you should take a class and maybe you can be really good,' and then I went to the class and then they showed me how to use a ruler and perspective and all this stuff and it totally made me not want to do it at all.

It's more like you write what comes to you... You try to reflect the mood of the songs. Take 'Rearviewmirror', we start off with the music and it kinds of propels the lyrics. It made me feel like I was in a car, leaving something, a bad situation. There's an emotion there. I remembered all the times I wanted to leave.

Cannot find the comfort in this world.

Ladies and gentleman of Florida, this is the real Jeff Ament...take a very good look because there's an imposter running around...if someone comes up to you and says he's Jeff Ament and says he wants to take your pot or wants to take you to a strip club, it's probably not him.

Before music videos first came out, you’d listen to a song with headphones on, sitting in a beanbag chair with your eyes closed, and you’d come up with your own visions, these things that came from within. Then all of a sudden, sometimes even the very first time you heard a song, it was with these visual images attached, and it robbed you of any form of self-expression.