The thing about being an artist is that you evolve so quickly, you grow, you learn, you change, you find yourself hating work that you made months prior. That's the hard part about making an album, but every couple days I fall asleep listening to my album front to back and I lay there feeling so proud of what I did.

Pop music really is a love and a joy and a science [of songwriting].

If you're not inspired and you're working hard to pull inspiration from somewhere and make a song something it's not, then it's very contrived and I don't like to write music that's contrived.

Before Guadalcanal the enemy advanced at his pleasure - after Guadalcanal he retreated at ours.

Being an artist and having a following can be a very scary thing because idolization makes you question your inner role in the universe. A lot of people get caught up in this idea of, "Wow! This world does revolve around me," and it most certainly does not. It's the exact opposite; these people don't exist for you, you exist for them.

I think that sometimes people fear continuity because it can turn into repetition - and there's a lot of artists who are really good at creating something new all the time. But for me it's about the consistency in my story. Because after all, I'm the protagonist in everything. All the songs are about my life so naturally there will be some connection because I'm still the same person I've always been.

I write songs very quickly, so the 20 minutes of joy I get out of writing a song doesn't compare to the two months of joy I get engaging with the people who like my music.