The people I really admire, like William Blake and John Coltrane and Richard Wagner, had these ridiculously full universes that took their entire lives to describe.

When you make a melody that doesn't come with words from the get-go, sometimes you're just thinking about random vowel sounds that go with it - and it's really, really hard to write lyrics that actually obey the vowel sounds.

Steely Dan is a band I'm not that into. Well, I guess I like certain singles.

I wasn't into chimpanzees or gorillas because I kinda felt like they were the Coke and Pepsi of the primate world.

The more songs I've written, the more I've grown interested in telling a story. When I first began, I had this list of opaque phrases where you can make of it what you want.