“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.”

Our band is very polarizing. There are people who absolutely can’t stand us, and people who absolutely can’t live without us. I’d rather spark those kind of polar-opposite feelings than have people be indifferent.

Hall & Oates is one of the few musical groups as satisfying now as it was back then. There’s something incredibly musically satisfying about their songs. Nothing has diminished my love for them.

I like writing on piano and a computer, and a lot of ‘Plans’ came out of samples and vocal lines.

The songwriting of Hall & Oates is deceptively complex. There are a number of key changes that pass you by as you’re listening to the song because they’re so seamless and clever.

To set the record straight for the God knows millionth time, we certainly didnt sign to Atlantic just for the money.

I have always been very open and earnest about some things in my life, some things that are not directly in my life, but they’re twirling around me at the time.

There were two recording studios in Bellingham. One was really expensive, a “nice studio.” We were at the point where we were young and irreverent.

As you go through your life, you make friendships, you break friendships, you have relationships. Music is the one thing I’ve always been able to rely on.

A lot of the material is about the inevitable disappointment people feel as they move through life, and things don’t feel the way they expect. No experience will ever match up to the idealized version in your mind.

Around that same time I started running. I never saw myself as the kind of person who would become a runner. It seemed unfathomable to me that I would ever run three miles, let alone 26.2.

And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time.

There are the people that are like, “I want it to sound like the last one.” You can’t please everybody all the time, but I think for the most part we tend to maintain a healthy level of self-reference to kind of make sure we continue to push things forward.

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.

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.

It really doesn’t matter to me what people say about me anymore.

Even if I have hundreds of things to do, the disconnected feeling is still there because it is very hard to find a real purpose of life.

For those actors and directors who produce films which are always about the old kingdom or about heroes.

The Internet is the best thing that ever happened to China. It turns us into individuals and also enables us to share our perceptions and feelings. It creates a culture of individualism and exchange even though the real society doesn’t promote it.

Real meditation is not about mastering a technique; it’s about letting go of control.

In order to be truly free, you must desire to know the truth more than you want to feel good. Because, if feeling good is your goal, then as soon as you feel better you will lose interest in what is true.

Suffering is how Life tells you that you are resisting or misperceiving what is real and true. It is the way Life suggests that you are not in harmony with what is.

Most people don’t get out of childhood, or adolescence, without being wounded for telling the truth. Someone says ‘you can’t say that’ or ‘you shouldn’t say that’ or ‘that wasn’t appropriate’.