People say, "I can't take you seriously because you're so young." But I think when you're young, what you feel is more pure.

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

The marketing is just as important as the music, almost.

The way I figured it, keeping quiet was safe. Words could betray you if you choose the wrong ones, or mean less if you used too many.

It was like the part of me that had enjoyed those friends had evaporated, leaving behind a huge, echoing emptiness, and I was scrabbling on the edge of it, trying not to fall into the hole within myself because I was terrified to find out how far down it went.

You have to invest something [in your work]. If you don't risk something that really matters to you - like your integrity, or your pride, or your time, or your security, or your reputation - if you don't risk yourself, you can hear it right away.

Sometimes I think that everyone has a tragedy waiting for them, that the people buying milk in their pajamas or picking their noses at stoplights could be only moments away from disaster. That everyone's life, no matter how unremarkable, has a moment when it will become extraordinary - a single encounter after which everything that really matters will happen.