The goal of serious musicians is to play outside of yourself. That's most likely with people who suggest things that are outside your musical experience.

The power of live music is vast. Live music is a wonderful way to spend some time.

It's important to allow people to affect you. If we kept that at the forefront of our minds, maybe we wouldn't be as divided as we are.

There is a certain immortality in the change that another person effects on another person.

I've always taken a lot of joy in my work, but it's also been very results-oriented. It's kind of like, making the thing, and taking a lot of joy in that, as opposed to allowing myself to be transported by the work of my fellow musicians.

The world's music is at our fingertips, so if we like music, we kind of owe it to ourselves to check in with all of that.

Musicians and non-musicians alike are priding themselves on the width and breadth of their musical interests, which I think is to be encouraged.

The greatest creators are as hungry to consume as they are to create.

I love the string band. I love the sound of it, the possibilities of it, I love the physical sensation of creating and performing in it. It's my voice.

The fact that I'm a fifth of Punch Brothers... that's lucky for me because I feel like I get to operate in the context of one of the great string bands. There's just not another string band I would rather be in, and i'm just compelled to make music for and with string bands. It's what I know, and it's kind of like who I am.

There's something about a variety show, I think, that disarms us as consumers of something. We're laughing, and there's this sense of anything goes, anything could happen.

I'm just done downplaying how much I love Radiohead and how massive of an influence they are on what I do, because it's pretty obvious.

I love music so much. It's like the one thing I'm good at.

I was two years old when I saw the mandolin for the first time, and I just loved it. I just loved the sound of it, the shape of it even, and the way it looks. And I still love it, which is a testament to something.

I think, until I was 16, classical music had just seemed like a little bit of a rhythmic wasteland for me. Coming from bluegrass, where one conducts oneself rhythmically, it seemed like such a different approach, and at that point the difference that I was noticing was a real turn off to me.

There are two genres of music: there's good music and there's bad music.

I don't feel that things need make their appeal exclusively to one demographic. I don't feel that there is truly great art that only appeals to people in a certain age range.

I'm obsessed with the idea of genrelessness and generationlessness.

It's like wine and food, or coffee and a pastry - coffee's awesome and a chocolate croissant is awesome, and together, they're transcendent. To me, music is the same way. Chris Stapleton is transcendent. Julien Baker is transcendent. Together, they're going to be euphoria.

I've performed in concert halls thousands and thousands of times in my life.

Like a sporting event, live events are the one thing you can't have anytime you want them.

I'm a massive Roger Federer fan, and sometimes I can see in his game the willful development of a tactic or technique that doesn't come as naturally to him, like fixating on improving the backhand. And I'm thinking, Hit the forehand! It's what you do!

Different people need different things.

I guess I am working pretty much all the time.