My favorite English teacher in high school showed me 'Brazil' when I was 15 and it blew my mind. It's one of those movies that's revealed itself in different ways as I've gone back to it over the years.

While there are so many beautiful Baroque churches and it's a beautiful artistic tradition, it almost gets hideous and grotesque if you push it further. You can take something beautiful and overdo it.

It seems like the record industry made so much crazy money in the 1960s that everyone wanted to get in on it. Now it's just become very corporate. So all of these people who despise music end up being in charge.

When I was younger, bands helped me connect to part of my humanity; bands that had nothing to do with anything political helped to form me. There's a correlation in that: If people can connect to music, maybe they can connect to each other.

I try not get too self-aware when writing lyrics.

I think of hip hop as a mass media, radio, MTV thing. It’s been extremely relevant over the last 10 years and rock music is just not anymore—-a tear rolls down my cheek as I say that.

Actual patriotism has to do with loving a place enough to try and improve it.