Puerto Rico has a stray dog problem. Tens of thousands of homeless canines - hundreds of thousands, by some estimates - live and die on the streets and beaches all over this Caribbean island of almost four million people.

Songwriting is like editing. You write down all this stuff - all this bad, stupid stuff - and then you have to get rid of everything except the very best.

Once I picked up an electric guitar, I lost interest in piano, and I just wanted to rock. I studied piano for so long, I got burned out on it.

A heart that hurts is a heart that works.

People in L.A. don't have to brace themselves against the cold; they slack off permanently, and their brains turn to mush.

I've always been in this sort of perpetual state of existential longing. I feel like something's missing.

I think everyone's pretty much the same underneath. The collective unconscious is a real thing. There's only a few emotions, and we all have them. There's, like, seven emotions. So personal is universal. Everyone experiences confusion, joy and pain, just in different forms.

The most rabidly religious people are the most rabidly evil.

People are complex. I'm just showing my complexity.

I don't really care about money. I find money boring and accounting boring, so I'm probably not going to ever make a lot of money.

Just do what feels right.

I've finally learned to love my voice for its uniqueness.

My music - that's the one area I won't let myself be pushed around. But in other parts of my life, I'm a confused mess.

It costs a lot of money to make an album in a studio in New York with a producer and musicians. I have to pay a publicist every month. I have to pay for mastering, production, the manufacturing of the discs. Then, to promote an album properly, you have to spend a lot of money.

If you want to achieve things in life, you've just got to do them, and if you're talented and smart, you'll succeed.

Sometimes I feel like a human pin cushion. Every painful emotion hits me with ridiculously exaggerated force. And the anxiety feels like hands inside of me, squeezing my guts really hard.

Baseball is more than a game. It's like life played out on a field.

One thing I've learned is I really want to work with people.

I like working with students a lot and watching some of the amazing stuff they put together.

For me, the poetic decisions tend to be calculated, and the musical decisions inspired by the poetic decisions are free.

When I'm depressed is when I'm not interested in writing anything, whereas some people, I think, are spurred to creativity through their personal experiences and through depression. And for me, it's a very low place, and it's not fruitful.

A lot of my personal life feels very separate from my music.

I don't fit into a group very well socially. And that might be reflected in my music.

I don't write thinking directly about what I'm feeling, usually. I just let myself write whatever comes out without it necessarily being directly a translation of what I'm aware that I'm feeling, you know?