When I'm happy, when I'm enjoying life, I'm home, I'm surfing, I'm spending time with my wife, my friends and I'm not thinking about the pain. And then the moment I encounter something that feels difficult, I feel like that's when, for me, I turn to writing and thinking and maybe a song comes from that.

If you truly love someone, you're going to be pure because true love comes from God, and God tells us to remain pure. That's good enough for me.

The tendency in today's culture is to want to be a 'star', but I want to be a servant.

Music is a handshake where I, as a songwriter, am only part of the equation. I love that, the fact that you can make the song your own.

I look for places where there's no one out on the water. I'd rather surf a wave to myself than fight a crowd.

I think that to believe is to acknowledge that it's a choice in that present tense and that doubt is always an option. You’re not dealing with a fact like one plus one equals two—I’m gonna choose to believe that. It’s kind of one of those things where you are choosing to believe that someone loves you. That is always going to be your choice. So for me, I think that’s what makes the faith that I have volatile and explosive and dangerous and troubling. That’s what most of my songs are about.

I try to write songs just for the song itself. I don't try and think about where it's going to end up, that way you're writing for the good of the song.