I think it's because Toronto is the Gothenburg of Canada, with the trends and the music and everything. I feel very at home when I'm there. Everyone has always been so kind to me.

I realized that even though I had this urge, this longing, to write about other people, in order for it to be emotionally gripping, I needed to be in there somehow.

Hmm... at some point when I was making 'Postcards,' it struck me, what the underlying themes for the record would be. It would be about choices, fears and doubts, and it had an existentialist theme to it.

I'm not too fond of the typical Australian activities or culture. I'm not into surfing - that's what I'm trying to say.

I'm very very happy for my hardships and misfortunes: they build character and make you a better person. Even if I think it's something you have to carry with you, it's definitely something that makes you more empathic towards other people, makes you understand people and relationships so much better.

I feel like it's my responsibility not to leave the listener in a pool of dread.

It was never part of how I imagined my music, and I watched in awe at how this ukulele troubadour image suddenly devoured the Jens Lekman I had planned so carefully.

I really do believe in clearing samples, and I believe that people should be compensated for them, but the laws are just so stupid.

A lot of people would write to me long stories from their lives, and I felt they were thinking of me as some sort of treasure chest to keep their secrets. I felt like sometimes they would tell me stories they wouldn't tell anybody else in the whole world. And I loved these stories.

I've always been interested in listening to people's stories.

I think sometimes when I sit down to write a song, it doesn't come out naturally, but when you are writing an email to someone, especially if you are writing to a stranger, you write much more spontaneously, and it's freer.

I think there are definitely a lot of subjects I don't share with people, but I'm not sure where that border is.

Some very silly songs can have an almost melancholy feeling when you put it in a different perspective.

I wanted to write songs about other people because I was sick of myself, basically. I didn't like myself very much. 'Ghostwriting' became an outlet for that. And then I could get back to get Jens Lekman again.

Summer is always best through a window.

Of the times that I've been able to overcome a fear, it's been by making it something that I can understand, that I can hold on to - just something that's more tangible.

My old songs used to take place in Gothenburg; then, when I lived in Melbourne, the songs just naturally took place more in Melbourne.

I think South Korea was one of the best shows I've ever done in my whole life. The people there were crazy. It was literally Beatlemania.

When I was a kid, I had a period in my life when I was eight or nine when I was so scared of dying that I wouldn't go out of our house for a whole year. I refused to step out of the door because I thought something would happen. I had all these compulsive thoughts or whatever, and my head was really messed up.

I don't want music to be a museum.

One of the nice things about songwriting is you can be inspired by absolutely anything.

'Postcards' was just a way of slapping myself in the face and saying, 'You can do anything! Just go for it!'

The idea of printing out something that's as scary as a tumor into its concrete form was something that spoke to me - there is something very liberating about that idea.

When it comes to heartbreaks and disappointments, I often have to be more or less done with them to be able to write about them. Then you might ask why I would write about them at all, but I think I owe it to the Jens of the past.