I start writing, pull whatever images happen to occur to me and make up a story, instead of starting with details that are real and I know of and going from there.

People want you to play the songs they know. I try not to reflect too much, and I don't really like to focus too much on myself.

A bands first albums usually not great. When you made the first album, you had a day job and you were still trying to be serious about it.

When you punish a person for dreaming his dream, don't expect him to thank or forgive you.

I'm finding things out about myself as a person - as a writer - as I write, and so are the people who listen to what I do. But they have this additional aspect of how they take the stuff that I do, and so it broadens the work and it creates this strange connection. It's really a way of strangers communicating through this third thing, which is a body of work. But really, I know it's a cliché to say I write for myself, but I write for myself.

Young people like to feel self-righteous, like they're on the right side of things.

It's an important moment as a reader, I think, when you can forget the question of whether you need to know what happened. Some people really want hard explanations. I'm the other way. I like mysteries. I don't want to frustrate people. I don't want people to feel like they got no answers, but I want to approach the mystery and sit with it.