Michel de Montaigne Quotes

I don't really plan what comes out of my mouth, and that's what makes most of my lyrics entertaining.

In my music, I'm never going to force anything to try to recreate a moment or something.

You know what, I just write what I feel.

One must not imitate what one wants to create.

The whole point about vision is that it's very individual, it's very personal, and it has to be confessional. It has to be something which hurts - the pulling out of it and putting it on the page hurts. Art can be about the individual writer's response to his or her condition, and if that response comes out of a predigested belief about what the audience wants to hear about the writer's condition, then it has no truth, it has no validity. You either write with your own blood or nobody's. Otherwise it's just ink.

I wish more people would take the extraordinary talent they have and just let their id go because that's what we discovered. We discovered that the sillier we got, the more people believed that we were speaking from our hearts.

I love improvising.

It was not cool to be that fun, bubbly kid, so I would just go off on my own and sing and make up songs, and that's how I think I developed into the kind of artist and writer that I am.

I think it's important to really press on with the song writing and just go with it. There's no code, there's no craft... it's just let yourself shine through your music. If it's meant to be loved and heard, it'll happen.

If you think something's funny, go with that. Most comedians pull jokes from a place of honesty.

I play as I feel.

As much as I know people love the method and what you can draw out of yourself, a lot of acting is very imaginative.

I'm a believer in just open, free-form creativity, and you never know the surprises that life has in store, and that, purely on a creative level, there's no such thing as rules.

It is almost impossible to reconcile self expression with the creative act.

The main thing in making art often is letting go of your expectation and your idea.

I've never been one of those guys who storyboards every frame, because that would take away some of the mystery and some of the fun.

I feel like I've kinda danced around telling the truest story I can for many years of my life. I've been a little distracted by trying to be shocking or edgy or cool or whatever, and by letting go of that and telling the truest story I can - even if it's about aliens and talking raccoons - it works.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what's really happening to me, even if it's a tough pill to swallow for people around me... I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction - they're always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

I don't even think about maintaining a relevance. I just think about what do I want to paint, what am I gonna do now, what am I gonna do later.

You can't ever create defensively. You just have to create the next thing that really speaks to you.

If I can't be honest with music, forget it.

That's the thing about creating. When you create, you create your own thing, whatever that is. It's always going to seep through in whatever you do.

I don't do all the things I say I do in my songs, but nobody does.

You can only write your own vision.