“I usually know the general emotion of a song, or the general feeling of it, and then I think I just get so excited by the act of recording. I love that process so much that I feel like if”

They’re all a huge influence on me. For me, just following rock history and watching Darkness On the Edge of Town and realizing that’s it’s okay to be obsessed with a snare sound because Bruce Springsteen was obsessed with a snare sound.

With a song, you can shove it in a dark closet and tell it you’ll be there when you’re ready.

The more you tour, the better the band gets, and you get caught up in a lot more things than just traveling. It becomes a way to survive.

When you start getting into a full-band, democratic context the little things almost immediately get thrown out the window because you don’t think they’re important.

Touring is a rough thing. You don’t have any time to look around or stop and think if what you’re doing is making you happy.

It’s rare in life to look at all the people around you and realize that they’re all invested in what you’re doing.

Neil Young, who isn’t really evident when you listen to my music, is probably my favorite of the legends, besides Dylan.

I know when the time has come to throw it in the trash can. With a child you’ve got to go to therapy and put it in daycare and buy it birthday presents.

I think that’s why it feels like songs are really connected, and I like that. They’re all worked on kind of like a little family.

You’re not so focused on the minutiae. You’re focused on the overall feel, and that’s the stuff that I get from the demos.

I always work on the songs all together up until the very end. I never mix a song and think, “Okay, now that one’s done.”

First impressions are always the most important.

When you’re in the moment and not over thinking the song is when things tend to really work.

I love when people will say, “Oh, my songs are my children.” I understand that, but I’m also not afraid to kill my kids.

Women, in general, are not part of the corruption of the past, so they can give a new kind of leadership, a new image for mankind.

Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.

There need to be more women supporting women. Not just in fashion, in general.

No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.

Consumerism diverts us from thinking about women’s rights, it stops us from thinking about Iraq, it stops us from thinking about what’s going on in Africa – it stops us from thinking in general.

Everything that is hard to attain is easily assailed by the generality of men.

It may be laid down as a general rule, that no woman who hath any great pretensions to admiration is ever well pleased in a company where she perceives herself to fill only the second place.

That no generally applicable law of the formulation and development of hybrids has yet been successfully formulated can hardly astonish anyone who is acquainted with the extent of the task and who can appreciate the difficulties with which experiments of this kind have to contend.