My extended family is very political and very polar with each other, and it's put a bad taste in my mouth. All the rhetoric going back and forth and sort of hating on each other. So I'm not an extremely politically active person at this stage of my life.

I kissed my first girl when I was 15, and then I lost my virginity when I was 17. So that's pretty good. It was just that when you're in high school, you're sort of forced into the normal world, where you're competing with the football players, just kind of in that world where somebody like me didn't quite fit in.

I think that was going on with bands like The Strokes was that the idea of the band, a real band, was making a comeback. My brother in law is an example- before he was listening to some country music, even some of that awful nu-metal stuff , but there weren't many options really.

Horrible dates are when you're with people who are immature and can't really be comfortable in their own skin.

There's no real reason for me to be so obsessed with trying to understand the true nature of things. You can live a perfectly happy life being utterly confused and not knowing.

The love you have for your kids is so overwhelmingly powerful that it alters your perspective. The dark things going on in the world become very poignant and vivid.

My dad and I get into it all the time. He loves to discuss politics much more than I do and we have pretty heated conversations.