If a band isn't coming up with two to four of those when they pick up their instruments, then they have problems - even if none of them turn into a song. If that's not happening in a band, it's time for therapy or breaking up.

I saw an interview with Jay-Z where he said he didn't write down any of his lyrics, so I tried that.

I sometimes try a variance of the drawer trick - [I write it] and then come back to it and see if it blows.

I try to be patient. I feel like the point of art is to go down within yourself and to pop up into other people. If you're lucky, all of a sudden you're like, "whoop!" You're in other people.

Your ego gets activated real quick, you really want to impress yourself. But when you come back to it, sometimes you're like, "Yeah, this part? I don't know. This guy needs a lot of help."

When you wrote a song way back in the day, you were writing material to play live. And you would buy the CD at the shows if you like the show. You may not listen to the CD, you might just throw it in the back of your car and let it warp in the sun. The main thing was you saw the song at the show.

There was no indie rock band in the 90s at the level of, like, Grizzly Bear. I listen to their records and it's crazy how good they sound. That really freaks me out.