You hit a guitar, you hit a note, you hit a drum, you hit an organ. Meat and potatoes. Simplicity. Not getting too caught up in little tweezers of perfection.

It's amazing when you find a photo of your grandparents when they were young because it's black and white and the care that they put into their appearance back then was so grown up and specific to that era.

I really love watching the 70s live performance TV series "The Midnight Special" and "The Old Grey Whistle Test". Those are the best performances you've ever seen, and they sound incredible.

Be alone even when there's a million people around, because tomorrow it will be a different million people.

I just went to Europe, spent a year traveling, and then I came home with a finished album and said, "Hey everyone I'm back!" I gave everyone their lighters from Luxembourg, gave them the postcards from Italy and Rome, then said, "Hey look, I made a record, too" and played it for them. The general reaction was shock, because it was so different from what they've known me to do.

Songwriting is a really fortunate skill to have to frame living and to find new ways to observe things you're going through.

When you say something or sing something enough times, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's almost like casting spells. I don't mean necessarily in the flighty, 'I'm going to go buy a cloak with a hood now' way.