Sometimes touring can warp reality because you're never in one place long enough to get a feel for it. You don't interact with people long enough to know what real life is. That's why a lot of artists write songs about longing and missing people when they're on the road. I do my best to keep my mind open and I read a lot when I'm on tour, so I hope I have good things to write about. I'm constantly in the songwriting process.

Humans will always endure suffering - even accepting the fact that we're going to die will cause us suffering, and from that stems a little pessimism and negativity that all of us are susceptible to.

I had never made a record before, so I didn't know anything about it. I don't know anything about knobs, frequencies, tones.

Don't let your mind stop you from having a good time.

I still go through stages of wanting to try other trades. When I was young I thought I'd be a magician. And then a cartoonist. Or a professional roller-skater. But there wasn't much support for those on career day.

Anything that we're connecting with that's happening right now, there's an obvious vulnerability - because we're just fragile human beings in the middle of a just-now expression.

I was curious as to why a million Americans weren't lining the beaches in boats and with buckets to preserve the life sustaining resource that is the Gulf of Mexico. Personally, as a surfer, I was most sorry for my fellow watermen. Seeing beaches closed due to contamination just broke my heart. If that ever happened in San Diego I'm afraid I might be forced to move.