My grandparents are from Mexico, so I grew up with great Mexican food.

I don't like the way recording to digital sounds.

It's a hard thing to explain, but the more I arrange for strings, the more I realize the possibilities.

It was endlessly amusing to me to try to imitate John Lennon and Paul McCartney's harmonies using the guitar.

When I started to take literature and poetry classes, I just started to get inspired by these new incredible works of art that I had never seen or heard of before. I wrote a lot of bad high-school poetry, just like pretty much everyone did, I think, at some point. For me, the inspiration never really stopped.

I've never used the word jamming. It's a matter of finding a great song and learning the chords, then slightly altering the vocal melody, and matching a classic chord progression with another chord progression.

I got into one Metallica record. That was about it. I never got into AC/DC or Black Sabbath or any of that. I was interested in the side of heavy metal that had interesting guitar ideas, but that was a very short-lived thing.