I think of myself as a songwriter, a weaver of story and imagination in a way that a novelist might write a book.

I was really influenced by a lot of Disney soundtracks, because that's what I used to watch all the time, and they always put music in it, which is why I tend to have popular melodies over harder beats.

I do write a lot of prose. It's not disciplined enough yet that it's actually become stories, or short stories. The idea of writing a novel seems impossible.

I've always felt that I'm affected by the world, by the way we treat each other, by the way different countries treat each other. I've always been very affected by politics, society, but I never got to a place as a writer where I felt like I could begin to deal with such things and do it well.

You shouldn't separate the piece from the way it's intended. I always feel like words shouldn't be unraveled from the music. They're all linked so much together.

Everything from a lifetime's worth of collecting things. You know as we go through life, and something stays and ends up on your shelf and lives there until you die? Just those little things.

In the past members of my family on both my mother's and father's side have fought in the war, in the first and second World Wars. Unfortunately, they're dead and I wasn't able to speak to them, but that was in our family history too.