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.

Sometimes I write songs that just come out in a pop format because I grew up on melody and these amazing artists during the 80s. It's my tradition and it's something that I can't really control.

History is filled with fictional people.

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.

I wondered what things what things became when you no longer needed them, and I wondered what the future would hold once we'd gotten past our personal tragedies and proven them ultimately survivable.

[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.

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.