I'm really close to my family. As I get older, it's like they're the only people I really talk to.

I lived in a small city on the Mississippi River across from Iowa, so I didn't have a country upbringing, but in high school we would go drink kegs in cornfields.

The more you get into conversations with people, you find out they've been brainwashed by the news and they don't actually know any better.

I don't want to get into an argument at the bar with some old racist homophobic person.

I left the Midwest feeling like, "People are small-minded, they don't want to ask questions, they don't want to think out of the box." Some of that was true.

Sometimes people think, "You don't get to have it all, you don't get to be happy, life's a struggle," but what if it's not?

You need to get out of your comfort zone, return to the Midwest, see some family, and, as cheesy as it sounds, work the land - plant some trees, maybe take up watercolor.