Any art that you are playing based on effort, loses something. I think that most of the time it should be something that happens, and you are inspired, and you just feel and follow your instincts. The best chiseled sculptures happen when the sculptor looks at the stone and says "I saw this sculpture in the stone, and I had to get it out." It's not contrived.

I love playing our older songs along with newer ones but If all I have is my old stuff, I quit. Creating is more rewarding.

In Fall Out Boy, I noticed that I wasn't putting all that much soul into it. It was just kind of screaming, I guess. I was just dying to get out of there!

I think you can totally be a totally normal kid from the suburbs of Chicago and go off and play shows. It's one of those things that when you go home, you're still the nerd you were when you left, and your parents still get to yell at you about cleaning up your room, and your girlfriend still drags you to the pet store.

Good music is good music, regardless of where it comes from. I think that's a really important thing to carry with you.

I am genuinely into soul, R&B and hip hop - all these genres that get slapped under the 'soul' genre. That spoke to me more than it did to my punk-rock friends. And punk spoke more to me than it did to my soul friends. I basically didn't fit comfortably in either world.

Be yourself! Love your mom, but if she's trying to get you to be someone you're not, she's in the wrong