Sometimes art is just about getting a reaction, that's really the end-all be-all.

Emo always meant emotional. Any kind of art or music should be emotional. If its not, than it's pretty much just a jingle selling bleach or pizza.

I made songs really for myself - I didn't ever expect to put it out there.

We're all gonna land, we don't have rocket packs that last forever. But these things that we love, these things that give us purpose, these moments along the way are our parachutes. So I feel very fortunate to have all of these. Art and my family are pretty much my biggest parachutes.

I've always been a fan of the band setting. I've always been a believer in bands, and I've always been in bands. That's where my comfort zone is. So to stand outside of that, that was never my intention or goal. I never had the dream of, 'I'm gonna go into all these bands as a spring board for my solo work.' But life takes you on different journeys sometimes. I ended up playing a bunch of songs and some of them I really liked.

I would rather be trampled by thousands of children than touch a spider.

I feel like the older I get, the more I start to think about life in general. All the clichés that people tell you, the ones that you hear over and over and over again, there's a reason they're cliché, there's a reason you hear them over and over again, because it's all true. As much as you don't wanna hear it, it's true. You'll find out later on, like "Man, they're all right."