I think it's nice to do work that is vaguely compromising to your health because it means you really care about it.

There was this darkness about being from New Jersey.

When I started playing in bands, we had to be apologetic for what we did. We had to be apologetic because the mainstream was so bad.

My grandparents got out of Poland right before the Holocaust and came here, and the only thing that mattered was surviving.

With art and the work you do, it has to be constantly dictated by what you're feeling and where you want to go with it.

When you're in a band, it's like everyone's the CEO, and anyone could destroy it at any moment.

I've ended up on some website list or some other list for super right-wing people. They've been tweeting some pretty rude stuff at me, so I think there's a sect of America out there that doesn't like certain opinions and can really take their claws out when they don't like what you're saying.

To grow up five miles outside of the greatest city in the world is a bizarre experience.

Everybody has this sack they're carrying. Some are heavier. Some are lighter. But no one doesn't have it. And if you think someone doesn't have it, they have a bigger one than you imagine.

The heart and soul of pop is newness, excitement, innovation.

Great songs come out of people's bedrooms; they come out of studios; there's no formula for it.

When you go all over the world for work, your dream vacation is your bedroom.

As straight Americans we have two choices: we can choose to sit back and enjoy our rights as we have them, or we can realize that it is actually not freedom at all when our friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues do not share these basic rights.

Tinashe doing 'I Wanna Get Better' - it's a really personal song, and it was hard for me to imagine anyone else doing it, but stylistically her and I are so incredibly different that I was fascinated to hear what she'd do with it, and I completely loved it. It just felt like the different expression of a song that, to me, was so stamped in one way.

All I have to do to continue to make things work is make great records, and that's more important than having a crazy master plan.

For me, a perfect pop song is something like 'This Year,' by the Mountain Goats.

There's nothing more adult than being ripped away from friends and family, you know? Having to manage a life when you're not fully there, manage a life when you don't make a lot of money. It's very adult.

Of course, the majority of us would speak up in the face of outrageous bigotry, but do we speak up in a social situation when someone casually refers to something as 'gay'? If we don't, we are standing with the homophobes whom we are quietly fighting.

I could probably name thousands of albums that I want.

That's what is incredible about human beings, is the choice to keep going.

In this business, it's important to constantly do things that you don't know how to do. I love touring and making records, but I've learned how to do that, so sometimes you just have to dive in and try it.

I have my cousin's jacket from when he was at war in Iraq. He never came home. It's incredible to have something that is so personal but that I also feel relatively comfortable wearing.

The exciting thing about Bleachers and fun. are they're different, and they're aesthetically different in many ways. But it's also like my role is very different, and that's cool.

Everyone has something that they carry always, even if it's just as simple as, 'I hate myself.' Everyone's got a different thing.