"Words, like glasses, obscure everything which they do not make clear."

"There's never any pressure on the music having to be something."

"I didn't want to be on a major label. I wanted all the attention and the noise to go away because I wanted to be something a little bit more substantial."

"I feel like I've spent the majority of my time touring and traveling, so if I reduced the actual time making music, it's probably four and a half years at the most."

"There's more things that I'd like to do. You know, each song is a little bit of a puzzle. I see most of them as just failed attempts."

"I have heard some stuff that might be influenced by my records, but it's usually pretty wacky and off-the-wall, which is kind of annoying, to be frank."

"Every band I knew or played with had flyers and properly-recorded demos and contacts; I couldn't even get a gig."

"Being able to take musical ideas through every iteration is attractive to me. Granted, not everyone's going to want to listen to that, but it should exist."

"I've personally reached the point where the sound of MP3s are so uncompelling, because so much is lost in translation."

"You can't meditate on walking or certain human habits. You concentrate too much on the way you walk, and you'll start walking pretty weird."

"Growing up, a film was an action film or it was a comedy or it was romantic, but you don't really see such stark lines between genres nowadays."

"Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader."

"Ask the young. They know everything."

"The passions of the young are vices in the old."

"Kindness is loving people more than they deserve."

"A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve."

"Tenderness is the repose of Passion"

"Tenderness is the rest of passion."

"We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future."

"There is always some frivolity in excellent minds; they have wings to rise, but also stray."

"Imagination is the eye of the soul."

"One who has imagination without learning has wings without feet."

"The mind's direction is more important than its progress."

"God is the place where I do not remember the rest."

"When my friends are one-eyed, I look at their profile"

"Choose in marriage only a woman whom you would choose as a friend if she were a man."

"It is an aspect of all happiness to suppose that we deserve it"

"Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them."

"The cliche of what a rock star is - there's something elitist about it. I never related to that. I'm an entertainer. I think of it as, you're performing for people. It's not a self-glorification thing."

"I never had any expectations of winning a Grammy. It wasn't something I was set on, that I was hoping and praying and starving for."

"I love British humor. It's just so - surreal."

"You have to shelve a lot of your inspiration. There's only so much you can do with one record."

"We play a hip-hop song and suddenly 25 people on the left jump up and put their hands in the air; then you play Lost Cause and they're like, I don't know about this one."

"There's some quality you get when you're not totally comfortable. When you're not doing what you're used to, you could completely fall on your face. You could completely blow it."

"There's 40 or 50 songs that nobody's heard that I've done in between albums. There's a whole evolution from Midnite Vultures to Sea Change that's never been released."

"The years keep going by and you realize, Wow. Doing these records is such a process: going on tour for a year and a half, then you get home and you want to do other things."

"The repercussions of what you put out and what people gravitate to in your music never registered at all. I never had that thing that maybe other bands have - a specific idea of what they are and what their sound is."

"Sea Change was so specific. From the beginning it was set what it was going to be. All the other ideas that I had at the time I had to put to the side."

"It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle it without debate."

"Chance generally favors the prudent."

"There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world."

"Never cut what you can untie."

"Children need models more than they need critics"

"Children need models rather than critics."

"Who ever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings."

"It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it."

"The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk."

"Be charitable and indulge to everyone, but thyself."

"In the studio, I'm always throwing people on different instruments."

"In the past it seemed like I was making fun of rap a little bit. But it was more me making fun of myself, since I'm not technically a rapper, whatever that means."