“Between every record, we all split off in our own world and we all end up listening to usually pretty different music on our own. We come together not really knowing what the other people having been really listening to and what’s been influencing them.”

We had cut ourselves free from the security of day-job life. The goals became primarily financial, at least for a while. That was the roughest time we had ever had as a band, because that was the first moment we realized that this was for real.

You remember that stuff and laugh about it now. You don’t feel it the way you did back then when you were so scared and nervous and tired and hungry.

I don’t want to be overdramatic about it, but I’m starting to see a lot of my bad habits get the best of me.

I couldn’t wait to go on tour back then. I would be sitting at my day job or my apartment, just itching to go. There were so many adventures that were about to happen.

We were playing Chinese restaurants and basements and record stores and houses. We were crashing on floors and it was all new and exciting. It was like a vacation. It didn’t feel like work.

We were not goofing around anymore. We all threw everything we had into this in a way where we all found ourselves really far from home, and we were stuck with each other.

There’s a cinematic quality that happens in my mind when I hear something that really lands. An album is just a journal of a life moving through time.

At this point in my life, I find myself obsessed with alternate paths I could’ve taken. I don’t think about this with a sense of regret, but with a sense of wonder.

Death Cab is a militantly analog band. We’ll continue moving forward with our sound, but there will be no crossover.

I’m not like a 90-mph fastball kind of guy, but I can hit 70 on radar gun.

The late ’90s were a really bad time for people trying to be rock stars, you know what I mean? It seemed like everyone was a one-hit wonder on the radio.

I feel like there’s a lot of beauty in the darkness of ‘Narrow Stairs,’ but that’s not really a place I’m ready to go to for a while. I’m interested in taking a different approach and having the next record be different in tone – I’m just not interested in making another dark, dark album.

I don’t hear it now the way I did when I was 20. I think it is undeniable that the songs have become more instantaneously descriptive and literal.

The second ‘Postal Service’ album is threatening to become the ‘Chinese Democracy’ of indie rock. It will come out eventually, or maybe it won’t.

Anything was better than going to work. All those early tours before we made any money were more like vacations. I don’t think it was until 2001 that we pulled our heads out of the sand and were like, “What are we doing?”

An ex-girlfriend once got upset when I told her that music is the most important thing in my life. It’s more important than anyone else could ever be.

Dog’s listen, or appear to listen. I think they hear blah, blah, blah, FOOD, blah, blah, blah. They appear to be listening to you.

The basic rule of human nature is that powerful people speak slowly and subservient people quickly – because if they don’t speak fast enough, nobody will listen to them.

The world knew it couldn’t break you unless you listened to it talking shit thought and broke yourself.

Feeling lost is a sign that you’re finally listening to yourself and no longer conforming to what is expected of you.

I have fun when I’m making music, and I want people to have fun when they listen to it.

J.S. Bach was easily the greatest musical innovator in the history of the world. He was so advanced for his time. There’s a spiritual depth to his music. You can listen to it and it’s like meditation.

I listen to oldies but goodies stations, ’60s and ’70s music.

I don’t have joy in watching myself, whereas, actually, I quite like listening to my own music.