I didn't even know the industry of songwriting existed. I thought everybody sang songs and they were only singing the songs that they wrote. So after I found out about songwriting in college, I was like, "Okay, I want to do that."

I knew what I didn't want to do- that's always my starting point. The starting point is always that I don't want to repeat myself. Or I try my best not to, with varying degrees of success.

You go back and look at some of the ancient writings that exist throughout the world about wars and it's the same; the human beings' articulation of events is the same. That really fascinated me.

I tried to use words that were dealing with the emotional quality that any human being could recognize in the way that they felt about their country. It's to do with the world we live in. That world is a brutal one and full of war. It's also full of many wonderful things and love and hope

I decide immediately if I like a person and if I do, then I'm myself, and if I don't, then I give nothing.

I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs.

Like I have to pretend like I'm a male rapper, that I got stacks and we're in the club, and what do I want to say. And then, when writing Rare I could just be PJ.