I’m really only responsible to make sure that one person is clapping at the end of my life. Because I feel like as a performer, a lot of times you live for everyone else’s applause. That’s a dangerous thing within the church or outside the church.

I like to write on airplanes... that forced meditation time when you have nothing else to do, so your mind is allowed to go to places it wouldn't otherwise go.

Sometimes, the best songs are the ones you write without any pen and paper or audio recording device or guitar in your hands. Because there's nothing between you and the melody; it's just a great lyric.

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love another.

It's really hard to fit a complex idea into a 3-minute pop song. And when you're dealing with issues that you're passionate about, usually they have various levels. And within a poem, you can get around the issue of space, and in a song the same way, by simply leaving holes and alluding to what you're talking about.

Our world spins upside down and sometimes we have to lose our grip on the things we value in this life in order to grab on to true life.

I think surfing and music are both places of release and self expression where there are no rules, and you can find a different form of freedom that you can't anywhere else.