The idea of songwriting is a transformative thing, and what I do with songwriting is take situations that are quite ordinary and transform them in some way. Apart from things like the murder ballads, the songs I write, at their core, are quite ordinary human concerns, but the process of writing about them transforms them into something else.

I'm a kind of hard-wired pessimist. I can't help but see the world in a certain kind of way.

All of our days are numbered. We cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all, because the worth of an idea never becomes apparent until you do it.

Texting is apocalyptic on some level. It's a reduction of things.

The secret to longevity in the music business is to change, and to be able to change. [...] An actor has to assume other people's identities. A rock star doesn't need to do that. [...] But change is important.

When I start to write a song, I initially fall into patterns and creative habits that are familiar, and because they're familiar, they sound convincing. It's important for me to not pursue those ideas, because I've already done them, but to find ideas that are different and feel strange to write and disconcerting to write.

At school I was an anti-magnet for women.