I didn't come in and say: "I'm a singer." I came into the band as a second guitar player and a vocalist, but not the songwriter. I had been writing p….

I got the chess bug when I was finishing high school, we were doing chess tournaments at my house. I never got to a very high level..

If time is my vessel, then learning to love might be my way back to sea.

My influences are vast and varied. I was into classic rock at the same time that I was into hip-hop. It was just that hip-hop was the first music tha….

I never wanted to start a band to sound like Nirvana..

I perceive everything to be constantly subjective and strange. My version of truth in what I express, it feels like that opaque quality that you're t….

I would have issues with directions songs were taking, but I never heard one of Carlos' [Dangler] basslines and said, "I don't like that, do somethin….

If you're an artist, you do what you do, and in a way, you don't even control the core essence of what you do. You try to mold it and develop a style….

I don't really get a lot of clarity in my everyday life and my interactions with people. Most things that happen to me aren't very straightforward. T….

It's not like changing one word with my lyrics is going to make them more intelligible or relatable. I was always very misunderstood and taken as ver….

In an artistic and spiritual sense I'm really not that concerned about what happens after the album is done..

...It's an unmeetable level of writing. But even if it's something I feel like I can't ever attain, it doesn't crush my spirit. I figured out early o….

The idea of starting a band because of Nirvana and thereby trying to sound like Nirvana is totally not the case..

You can't just imitate and keep coming up with ideas. You have to be tapping into something that's pure and unconscious in yourself or you'll have no….

Everyone is broken-hearted except for the drastically unimaginative.

Jeffrey Lewis sings as though absurdity were truth, and truth absurdity. And I think I agree with him..

Sometimes you learn about the personality of your favorite artist, and you like their art a little less, because it doesn't jibe with what you had en….

When I say I had a cosmic confidence that we were capable of writing good music, I'm speaking about that time when we met Sam [Fogarino]. Greg [ex-dr….

That's for non-musicians to say: "I only listen to this or that type of music." I think musicians love all music, or at least that's my case..

I had this perverse gravitation towards using a terrible cliché sandwiched in between absurd non-clichés because I thought it gave the cliché a new r….

If you're playing a one-minute game, I could squeeze in five to six games before anybody walked by my cubicle. So I got really good at blitz, one-min….