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It's very hard to separate what is a conscious decision and what's not.
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I have great relationships with all my exes, and everyone in my life, because I honor the time and the love and the energy of those relationships. I'm happy to say that I can have everybody over for dinner.
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I'm not confident about my appearance, I'm not confident about anything really in my life, I'm a very tortured soul when it comes to self-confidence, but when it comes to my pop songs, if I started to question, I would never stop questioning.
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Blind hope. Blind hope is all we have. There's a Greek tragedy called Prometheus Bound; Prometheus is the [titan] that gave humans fire. He's chained to a rock and bemoaning his fate and saying, "I gave you everything. By giving you fire, I gave you blind hope. By giving you a little light that kept you warm at night, I let you believe that this was all going to be okay." For me, that's what art has been. Music and books, it's an act of hope to make them, and it's an act of hope to listen to them. That hope will be dashed, you will say goodbye.
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The new solo album sounds like me: I'm singing about bad business transactions, bodily fluids, and courage.
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My pledge to myself is I will believe in my music, always. I stand behind everything I do. If I don't think it's amazing, how the hell is anyone else going to think it's amazing? But that's just me.
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Let It Die' is more piano-based, organ-based and percussion-based. Live, the songs are more guitar-based. The record that we're doing right now is really guitar-based. I feel like finally I get to write some parts that I'll be excited to play on tour for this record.
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I don't like saying goodbye to people. I find it much easier to forgive people than to say goodbye to them, I always have, in any facet of my life. It's hard sometimes to forgive people, but I find it harder to say goodbye if you love them.
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There was this wonderful day where we sat and listened to all of Andy's [Kim] songs throughout the years, and I think we spent around six hours at my house, and then we played all these tunes of mine that have never found any version. And "Heaven Without a Gun" is one of them, and it struck him. If you can find a compadre who doesn't live in the literal world 'cos you're not always fighting to explain yourself to make sense, that maybe it's the dyslexia, maybe it's the dreamer, maybe it's the idea that grammar was not your foreplay - excuse me - see what I mean, your forte.
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You're not going out there to make a living out of it by selling records. You want acclaim and you want to know people are listening.
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Being alive and understanding that and making the decision to actually live take a lot of courage.
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I could be dramatic and go "He saved my life!", but sometimes you just need to see it again. Sometimes you need to see that person want it so badly for all the right reasons, and it makes you realize that no matter what you do you already won.
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This is the thing I've noticed is that the greater the distance between you and any ordinary task is the measurement of how much rockstar potential you have.
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It's hard: you get older, you have a career, the normal frustrations that come with what you do when you wear your heart on your sleeve and you try really heard. I was exhausted, and I couldn't quite see the magic of creating at that time. That's all. I couldn't get into it, and Andy [Kim] slowly resuscitated me, and that's how I made Darlings.
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I think more like Charlie Chaplin than like Jennifer Anniston.
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It's a strange life... you really don't know how you will impact people or how things will play out.
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I'm not an endings person. I don't do endings. There may have been people in the band who wanted this to be an ending from time to time, but me and Amy don't really do endings. You cannot escape from us. Once we're friends with you, that's it.
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When I see friends of mine break up and they're like, "Oh, we still really love each other, but we just couldn't make it work," I don't get that. I don't understand what that means. Make it work.
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I suddenly thought about being backstage, and I think it shocks you to meet the people you shared your bedrooms with. And a lot of them either take themselves too seriously or don't know how to take themselves at all. But I wanted to be aware in a very sarcastic way that every song I've written has probably been written about 12-16 times before. And doing that makes it very hard for me to accept serious singer-songwriters in the world, the up-and-comers, the ones who are out there who let that define their every move, who live and die and breathe for it. It's a bit of a tragedy, I think.
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There's nothing better than striving to be a better man.
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You know and I know that as soon as it's done, you have to get it out there. You want what's best for it. And especially in owning a label, which some days is the greatest thing for me and in some days is my demise because you see the truth and the work that goes into things and you see things happen and you see things not happen, and all you want in this world of currency right now is popularity, that's it!
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Believe in the power of songs.
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You should never leave something with a feeling of defeat.
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I got a little lost in "Law & Order" and "Luther" and all those shows where it's basically women dying all the time, I had to stop watching that stuff because it fills me with anxiety. And I joined a gym.