Collaboration has become really integral to my process. I play music so that I can spend time with my friends and communicate in that way. I experience so much joy in that process, because, you know, it's those times of getting together and playing music and all that comes with it that are the best for me.

It was never my first choice to be a singer/guitar player. I really wanted to play drums.

It's hard to view myself sometimes as even in the same league as other musicians, mainly because there's so much music before me. I feel overinformed by different styles and different possibilities.

To conceive music, to execute it in front of others, to make it so others can do it...it can be pretty humbling, and kind of scary. So yeah, I don't really feel in competition with anybody. Not because I feel elitist, but because I have enough self-competition. I'm always struggling.

There is nothing wrong with loving the crap out of everything. Negative people find their walls. So never apologize for your enthusiasm. Never. Ever. Never.

I no longer know the author of this book, for simply stopping long enough and writing it down was where I changed from a boy with his eyes squeezed shut to a man with his eyes wide open so that the sunlight might reach my heart despite all that darkness.

That's why I played music; my social skills were limited. I think a lot of people that experience that pick up guitars, because they can't communicate otherwise.