I didn't respond to the kind of sarcastic tone. It felt like some of the Sarah Palin speech was written as though it were a Saturday Night Live newscast. Maybe that's because she looks very similar . . . She's got her Tina Fey thing going.

I would thank God, but I don't believe in it... It's like a movie that was way too popular. It's a story that's been told too many times and just doesn't mean anything... All I really believe in is this moment, like right now.

If there was anything that I learned with my own writing process, maybe there's too many choices what to write about. Just the amount of subject matter in the world these days; maybe that feels chaotic for me.

When I had a child, everyone was telling me that I was going to see the world through her eyes, and everything was going to get this nice gloss to it. I kept waiting for that to happen, and thought there was a real problem with me that it wasn't.

It seems like a necessary balance to life, being part of the community.

Our influences are who we are. It's rare that anything is an absolutely pure vision; even Daniel Johnston sounds like the Beatles. And that's the problem with the bands I'm always asked about, the ones derivative of the early Seattle sound. They don't dilute their influences enough.

I just have this deep kind of connection to reality of being like... in a way, I feel like a dock worker. I want to stay in connection with my dock-worker side, 'cause that's how I grew up.