You apply the skills you use to produce your own book to make an anthology. Shaping. Rhythm.

If everything really does get better, the way everyone claims, then happiness should be graphable. But that's crap, because better isn't quantifiable.

I always felt like I could combine good pop songs that are easy for people to like with a real person and a real mind and integrity. So maybe I bring people into that pop world who don't usually find themselves there because there's not enough stuff for them to get excited about otherwise. I try to be genuine. I try to be real. It's such a subjective thing, but I try to convey an emotion.

[In making music] it's nice to not have a goal, to not have a set format. It's very liberating to just get out of your comfort zone and be in a new space.

Activists are cultural artists. They envision a world that does not yet exist, and then take action to create that world.'

When I'm in the studio, I become a total nerd.

The way I figured it, keeping quiet was safe. Words could betray you if you chose the wrong ones, or mean less if you used too many. Jokes could be grandly miscalculated, or stories deemed boring, and I'd learned early on that my sense of humor and ideas about what sorts of things were fascinating didn't exactly overlap with my friends.