All the books on my shelves, when I would go to them to look for help with my anguish, they all just seemed so crass. They didn't get it. Those books don't understand. Nobody understands. The universe, nobody understands my agony, or my questioning, and it's this shift in what in the world around us could possibly be meaningful or helpful.

I learned how to sit on the couch in front of the fire and read a magazine, just for like eight hours a day, every day. It was... crazy.

People's attentions spans are getting shorter and shorter. I don't want to cater to that necessarily but, just for myself, it feels like more than 40 minutes of music is too much.

When someone close to you dies, the line is shifted really drastically about what is meaningful and what isn't.

All things in the world are singing a song, reciting a poem, inaudibly, to their surroundings, to the things they encounter.

It's a beautiful idea to focus on how everything is temporary and always in flux. It may feel bad now, but it will feel good later, and vice versa. To write about those things brings this satisfying feeling as a creative person. There's a lot of music out there that's like, "I'm so mad! I'm sad! I'm into skulls and crossbones and the color black," and that's just meaningless and shallow. So much of metal is about that and it's hard to find metal that is substantial and meaningful in terms of its content.

I'm not ... pumped about being alive. But I don't think about suicide ever. I have a kid. I think that's just an automatic shut-off of that idea. In fact, I just instantly went into the necessities of parenting, and I think it's been very good for grief. Because it's a reality check, I guess. I have very real tasks that need immediate attention all the time.