I started selling corn dogs, ended up in the music industry. That's how it all started.

So for every day that you're on this earth, for every minute that you have, the whole idea is doing nothing less than exactly what you feel you're supposed to do and squeezing every last drop out of life every day, regardless of the difficulties or trials that you face.

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.

With iPhones, nobody has an excuse for writer's block. If you're at Whole Foods getting your green tea extract and you have a melody, you just drop it into your voice memo and save it for later.

I would rather put out two year-defining songs a year than flood the market with eight or nine songs.

I knew I could make money from songwriting, so how much and when was not really the question.

I listen to the far left which informs the far right. Somewhere in the middle is where we end up.