I guess I'm a really analytical person, but when I'm writing, all that stuff goes behind a screen. Analysis and taking things apart is really important and really interesting, but it's the direct opposite of creating something, which has to do with taking things and putting them together and hoping to make something unique that's more than the sum of its parts. And you can't do that with analysis, you can only take things into smaller and smaller pieces.

If I'm working on a set of songs, and thinking about putting them together in a collection, I start to think about what they have in common. Either on purpose or without meaning to, I shape them all in the same kind of way, because I'd rather the album feel like a galaxy of things that all have to do with each other. I do that with sonic elements, too - it's a matter of each record having its own specific identity.

If you were a performer that only had an acoustic instrument, back in the day you couldn't hide behind your guitar pedals or the production or the vibe. There was performance and then there was the song, and that was all that you had.

It's a really common trap to want your life to live up to some standard that you believe in, and then you start to really examine those standards and realize they come not from experiences you've had, but things you've seen in movies, or feelings you've felt listening to pop songs, or ideas you've received from reading books. And not just happy things, but a lot of the time, sad things. It gets kind of depressing, when you see how movies and songs make these promises to us.

Songwriting is an emotional medium, and rock and roll is an emotional medium.

If you're going for things that are really terrible ideas you have to really have all your faculties about you to get away with them without being crucified. The best rock music gets away with something, somehow, that it shouldn't be allowed to get away with.

When your head is smashing into the concrete you don't have question about whether it's a real sensation. And ultimately, that's what's going to unmake us all - smashing up against the physical reality of death and decay, and being unmade.