I write songs because that's the thing I chose to do. And I can't help writing them, that's a fact. Sometimes I felt as though you worked to justify your existence, but you don't; you work to exist, and vice versa, and that's it, really.

I love to write honest songs that name real people, then get up onstage and live out those emotions in front of 15,000 people.

I don't write songs about a specific, elusive thing. I write about love, and everyone knows what it is like to have your heart broken.

I wish I could write easily. I'm one of those guys who's visited by the muse when things are dire.

A song is like a dream, and you have to make it come true. They're like strange countries that you have to enter. You can write a song anywhere, in a railroad compartment, on a boat, on horseback -- it helps to be moving. Sometimes people who have the greatest talent for writing songs never write any because they are not moving.

When you make music or write or create, it's really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you're writing about at the time.