The easiest thing to feel is sadness.

I don't know why you'd spend any of your time trying to remake something that you don't actually like.

I think subconsciously or selfishly I knew that I was supposed to do something. It was like a thumping or a throbbing saying, "Yes, this what you've been waiting for." But you're a little dim to those spiritual thoughts when you're dumb like me. So I did have to get a little bit of a kick. I played it for a bunch of people and I think their reactions were warm and deep enough that they gave me the courage to get [the record] out there.

Life sort of shrinks and you get older, I don't know if I'm going to have time to do all the things and be all the places as I want to be. Wisconsin's really sacred for me, so no matter what happens, where I end up permanently living, I'll be spending weeks and weeks at least of the year, no matter how many years I live, in the northwestern Wisconsin area.

It was all the things I wanted my music to be, but yet it wasn't grand and it wasn't obtuse - it wasn't overshooting, it wasn't undershooting, it was precise. The lyrics and the way that I was able to extract and excavate emotion within me.

I've stolen music before, I don't know anyone who hasn't. But if you're gonna do that, I want you to be able to have an opportunity to know the real lyrics because I really hate it when people put up wrong lyrics online.

You should be able to have happiness. If you don't have that, then you're not really bringing your whole self to the relationship.