“I just kind of thought about doing this my whole life. I never doubted myself once. I’ve always been singing, and I’ve always wanted to be on tour with a rock band.”

We definitely didn’t want it to be anything like our first or second records. We wanted to experiment more than we ever had and take any new idea and run with it as far as we could.

I mean, you can’t have sex until you’re married if you’re Mormon. The first time I had sex, my parents found out. They were listening in on the phone while I was talking about sex to my girlfriend. They freaked out, man. They both cornered me in my bedroom.

I’ll never be bothered if I don’t have a hit because you look at the songs that are hits and they’re none of my favourites. Just the fact that we do have fans waiting here, that’s exciting enough.

When people hear our record, they’re not going to be able to put us into the ‘New Metal’ category or the ‘pop-punk’ category or the ‘aggressive emo’ category. I think people will be able to take it for what it is.

If there is a God, he or she or it or whatever higher power there is is behind us so long as we’re using our music in an inspirational way. I’m here for a reason, and I was given a talent, so I’ll continue to try to use it.

It’s about being proud of who you are, being proud of your situation and just being stoked that things are always going to get better or always gonna get worse and that’s such a great thing. Every day is a new surprise.

When my body gets so overexerted with energy, I just keep going and going.

Sometimes kissing is better than sex. Especially kissing someone for the first time

When I hooked up with them I was still going to Narcotics Anonymous. But they were never into drugs. If it weren’t for the band, I think I’d still be getting high.

The biggest thing I’ve learned is that you only have one chance. You only have today to live-but you gotta take it and make it the best you can

Whether the color of your skin is black, white, yellow, brown or purple – the extent of this tragedy is so incredibly devastating that we had to do something.

We have this day to be alive. We better lay down and give up, or stand up and really make some worthwhile memories for ourselves. ‘Cause we’re not going to be alive forever

We are the outcasts, we are the ones that are different, we are the ones that never got along with anyone else, we are the ones that went back to our rooms and put on our headphones and listened to those records that made us happy

I remember a time when I would hear a band and then want to hear everything that sounded like it;

He’s a million rubber bands in his resilience.

There’s no real template to follow these days for what a band should and shouldn’t be – bands are just becoming these weird little Internet avatars that you either follow or download or interact with in some removed way.

I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.

There is nothing in art, in philosophy, or in politics to match the fervor of mutual cooperation among discordant bands of fanatics.

But the live band is now becoming ancient history in Thailand, Cambodia, and Burma.

And there are places on the border, such as the Arizona desert or the open terrain around the Big Bend in South Texas, where Mother Nature has created her own barrier that is not easily passable. Or if you do pass through it, you are easily detected.

Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.