“When I listen to Airplanes record, it takes me back. I remember a lot of my thought processes when I was 20 or 21, writing those songs and recording that record.”

I just rediscovered my guitar.

The story of our band is that we were this relentless touring band in those early years. We were leaving day jobs and going off on the road and having fun and seeing the country for the first time.

Bands who are in their early 20s today, they are living in their own time and they have a series of parameters they have to work around.

I’ve covered Avril Lavigne. I like good pop songs, and I don’t think there should be any kind of preconceptions about where good pop songs come from.

I don’t want to be overly dramatic and say it’s the only thing that gets me up and keeps me going. But people in your life come and go.

I want so badly to believe that there is truth, that love is real. And I want life in every word to the extent that it’s absurd.

Liking interesting things doesn’t make you interesting.

I’m a war of head versus heart, it’s always this way. My head is weak, my heart always speaks, before I know what it will say.

If there is one thing I think I have accomplished, it’s that I always thought of myself as a very literal songwriter, and as I look at some of those older records.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Phil Collins. He’s a great vocalist.

Now that we have the resources, we’re like, “Oh wow, a nice studio is pretty nice! They do have nice outboards here. It’s actually a pretty good place.” It’s funny how much changes so quickly.

I can remember how I sang – a little more nasal-y back then. Listening to those old recordings is like seeing a photograph of yourself from 10 years ago. You’re wearing what you thought looked cool at the time. You had your hair styled the particular way you thought looked cool.

I think sometimes a narrative can come out of a single word.

I can remember sitting up in guitarist Chris Walla’s bedroom and for the first time in my life having this realization like, “Maybe I can do this. Maybe I can make music that in some capacity people will enjoy and come see me play.”

We never sit down before we start making a record and talk about this new sonic palette that we are going to try to explore. We always let the record kind of reveal itself to us over time.

We had friends who had a hit single on the radio and sold 500,000 records, and then they couldn’t get arrested a year later.

No one is ever better off with dictators but there comes a time you know, when you’re on an airplane, they always say, “in case of an emergency oxygen masks will drop down. Put yours on first and then administer help to your neighbor.” We need oxygen right now.

Remember, you fly an airplane with you head, not your hands and feet.

The way the public sees it is this. If we don’t leave, we are idiots. If we do leave but don’t succeed in our mission, we are incompetent. But if we do succeed, it’s because it was easy and anyone could have done it.

The skillful man is, within the function of his skill, a different psychological organization. . . . A tennis player or a watchmaker or an airplane pilot is an automatism but he is also criticism and wisdom.

My ‘thing’ is that I just lie in my immense bed and look out the window at the skyline over Virginia and the sky and the airplanes coming into Reagan. I really love doing that.

Between the amateur and the professional . . . there is a difference not only in degree but in kind.

The odds against there being a bomb on a plane are a million to one, and against two bombs a million times a million to one. Next time you fly, cut the odds and take a bomb.

Seeing someone reading something I wrote on an airplane – things like that are pretty awesome.