“I didn’t fit in anywhere when I grew up, but I was always American, so to survive,”

I would love for Rivers Cuomo to listen to my music and see what he thinks.

I think my real influences are out of my control, which are the things that entered my brain when I was a kid growing up.

I think music is supposed to be shared.

Then you start to realise, ‘Oh, I’m bending a lot,’ and they’re just standing there existing, and I’m bending around them. But you can’t blame them: they don’t realise it; that’s just how they already existed. It’s hard.

I could never enter that dream. That all-American white culture is something that is inherited instead of attained.

Everything is so chaotic and messy in the world, and I have always felt kind of dirty.

I don’t think I have the kind of creativity to write fiction.

Growing up, I never really felt like anything was my own. I moved a lot, and I never belonged anywhere.

I hate that my opinions are gonna be on record… that my opinions of other artists are going to be on record.

I’ve stopped wanting a home, I think, because I’ve been on tour all my life, basically.

Being an outsider makes you a really good writer.

On tour, people know that if they ever ask me what I want to eat, I will always say Asian food. I’m becoming a stereotype, but it’s what I want to eat. I want to eat rice.

I think your ego gets in the way of making something good because it kind of blinds you from the actual art.

Whenever someone says they like something about my music.

A lot of musicians talk about how they were into music from the start; they always wanted to be musicians. It wasn’t like that for me. I didn’t think of it as a job or a career – it was just something that was constant.

When you’re an adult, things mellow out. I think when you’re a teenager and you are sad and the world is ending, everything is about that one sadness.

Some people would say they never see me because I don’t go anywhere. I stay in the blue state of Nashville, in my bubble.

In the modern world, in which thousands of people are dying every hour as a consequence of politics, no writing anywhere can begin to be credible unless it is informed by political awareness and principles.

You know, you spend your whole life feeling like you don’t quite fit in anywhere.

Whoever realizes that the six senses aren’t real, that the five aggregates are fictions, that no such things can be located anywhere in the body, understands the language of Buddhas.

A hero can go anywhere, challenge anyone, as long as he has the nerve.

Im not going anywhere near a motel with you.

The peace of our world is indivisible. As long as negative forces are getting the better of positive forces anywhere, we are all at risk.

Music is the soundtrack to your life. It’s not going to go anywhere. But the way people are purchasing music has changed. It’s not the same anymore. It will never be the same.