Sometimes you learn about the personality of your favorite artist, and you like their art a little less, because it doesn't jibe with what you had envisioned.

That's for non-musicians to say: "I only listen to this or that type of music." I think musicians love all music, or at least that's my case.

...It's an unmeetable level of writing. But even if it's something I feel like I can't ever attain, it doesn't crush my spirit. I figured out early on that you gotta find your own strengths and hone them rather than trying to emulate something that impresses you.

I never wanted to start a band to sound like Nirvana.

If you're playing a one-minute game, I could squeeze in five to six games before anybody walked by my cubicle. So I got really good at blitz, one-minute chess games. But that's kind of like the cheap chess version.

Everyone is broken-hearted except for the drastically unimaginative

I perceive everything to be constantly subjective and strange. My version of truth in what I express, it feels like that opaque quality that you're talking about. It's just me being legitimate.