I am not opposed to doing a side project, like Death Cab for Cutie, where it's completely different from my own band.

I find the songs that have the most human components in production are the ones that will stand the test of time.

There is maybe a cynicism because of my past as a writer.

If you're talking to an architect, he can look at a blank piece of paper, and once the initial design is there, the formula kicks in. Each room should have something unique and different about it - much the same way that in a song, every eight bars or so, a new piece of information should be introduced.

When you're around enormously successful people you realise their success isn't an accident - it's about work.

I live in Los Angeles, which is the second most polluted city in the world, and I wake up in the morning to dirt all over my window.

When I moved to L.A., I was penniless, absolutely beyond broke and in debt up to my eyeballs.