I like to write early in the morning, like, 5 a.m. If I'm really on my game, I don't have any coffee or stimulants. I'm kind of in a dream state.

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.

I'm fascinated with the attitude of younger rock bands, even ones that are making money at it. I don't ever hear them talk about it as a "career." It almost makes me think there isn't even a music industry anymore, like an atom bomb fell and it was just eradicated forever.

There are bands, like R.E.M., who want to have 17 records, and some are terrible and some are great. I don't know if people think like that anymore. Things are more atomized now.

I like to go play shows just to see people, so I'm not in the game of like, "You're at my show, you're gonna listen to it like this, blah blah blah."

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.

I don't have a set working style. Some lyrics come really slow, others come in 10 minutes while I'm watching basketball. They're always a surprise to me.