“Next door, there’s an old man who lived to his nineties and one day passed away in his sleep. And his wife, she stayed for a couple of days and passed away. I’m sorry, I know that’s a strange way to tell you that I know we belong.”

I think people use temp music quite a bit, but the people who write the temp music don’t ever really learn that their music was inspiring a movie.

And all I really want to say is you’re the reason I want to stay.

When someone really goes to tell you something about what they’re thinking, they’re going to wear that experience with them. That’s what you have to share.

I do have that mindset – that most good art comes from some turmoil, from someone trying to come to some equilibrium, or come up and get a breath.

I drink a lot, probably too much. My scene while writing lyrics is always a bottle of scotch and stacks of note cards, pencil and pencil sharpener. I throw around note cards and drink.

People aren’t going to sit there very often, not your average public, and your average music-business monster is not going to take the time to notice the overtones and the undertones inside the flavor. They’d rather just have the martini.

Everything I write is personal, really. Even when I’m sarcastic, it’s quite personal. And on this record, from the production to the singing to the performances, I got it really honest.

If I’m in a relationship and my girlfriend is sleeping with other people, I don’t need to know who it is; I just want to know how she feels about it.

I start songs all the time. If I weren’t so lazy, I would finish them. It’s like when I have a deadline I have to.

I divorce myself from listeners who aren’t tolerant of humor. I did notice universally that, especially when it comes to weight, people look in the mirror and get the angle just right, tell themselves it’s all right, and then they go out.

But I really do have a soft spot for the solo shows. Any musician who writes and sings will tell you that’s the center of it, that is it. It’s almost like there’s something church-like about it and you gotta go back there, if you’re a songwriter that sings your material.

I’m not really a strange person or anything, so if there’s music I like, usually there’s other people who like it too.

In many ways, I’ve chosen to be plain, almost too plain, too self-effacing. Like, if I record a vocal and I don’t like the way it sounds, I would have them turn it up and take the reverb off it to make it as plain as possible.

The way I see it, there’s only one melody for any song.

The less I talk in bars, write emails, express myself in an emotionally lewd way outside of my songwriting, the more I have to do it through my music.

The reason I stop playing songs is usually because I get sick of them, and then they find themselves back into the set list at some point.

Sometimes, I feel sorry for you. I’m not there to hold you, and this clouded sky do not let you talk to the moon.

I keep saying over and over. I’m sorry but I have to go now you are not my person.

I have always felt sorry for people afraid of feeling, of sentimentality, who are unable to weep with their whole heart. Because those who do not know how to weep do not know how to laugh either.

Tell him yes. Even if you are dying of fear, even if you are sorry later, because whatever you do, you will be sorry all the rest of your life if you say no.

We’re in a new world. We’re in a world in which the possibility of terrorism, married up with technology, could make us very, very sorry that we didn’t act.

I’m not sorry for choosing to grow in a different direction.

I am learning to forgive all those who are not sorry.

God is more ready to pardon that we have been to sin.