I didn't think I was gonna be playing on the Oscars or anything.

It's a lot easier to tell the truth usually.

I like home recordings and studio recordings just as much as each other - I don't think one is better - but for this record I wanted to see what I could do in a real studio with real producers.

I didn't know how many people knew who Ferdinand was.

I didn't think I was gonna be playing on the Oscars or anything.

I don't think that Dreamworks would have signed me expecting to really mess around with whatever it is I do.

I actually don't think that I'm gonna sell a lot of records.

I wondered if I would talk about drug use. But I guess, why hide it?

But I was also doing odd jobs around Portland, like spreading gravel and transplanting bamboo trees.

Well, I try not to think about the general public since I have no idea what the general public is and I don't think anybody does.

I rode on a float in one of the parades in Mississippi. It's an experience.

It was kind of ridiculous to carry it up to a certain point and then drop the ball or the bomb, like quitting the band right after we had signed to Virgin.

I was coming off of a lot of psyche meds and other things.

It's just that a lot of songs that are popular right now, they don't have any meaning.

My girlfriend at the time convinced me to send these songs to Cavity Search. When they wanted to put out my record I was totally shocked.

If you play acoustic guitar you're the depressed, sensitive guy.

I don't really like New York better than Portland. It's just a different place.

It touches on drug use. I got caught up in that for almost two years.

I was trying to do the same thing that I always do which is make an interesting record.

I just wanted to move out of Portland to do something.

I didn't have a hard time making it, I had a hard time letting it go.

I can't think of anything off the top of my head that seems more important than something designed to raise money to keep something going that keeps IV drug users from dying.

There are lots of things I like about playing in a band, the things I can't do by myself you know.

I'm just writing songs about how I feel or about how people I know feel.

There's always that argument to make - that you're in better company historically if people don't understand what you're doing.

The band's filter, but playing live is a lot of fun.

I mean people just have a way of - y'know they'll review your record in two sentences and put you in this little stupid box that you don't want to be in.

Because God only knows why people like what they like and don't like something else.

And I'm not trying to write heavy songs.

I watched myself put my paw in the bear trap on that one because there was this clause about leaving members.

It is a peculiar part of the good photographer's adventure to know where luck is most likely to lie in the stream, to hook it, and to bring it in without unfair play and without too much subduing it.

But I have returned to one hundred percent playing this year. I am fully back to playing full time.

I'm a long-term optimist, and I don't think the problems with our society are from being overly optimistic.

It always amazed me that he was able to do it, and that Orson Welles was able to do it. I never understood it because the talents are absolutely opposite - polar opposites.

Documentaries make a difference.

My rejection of the idea of entertainment in its current form is based on the audience that comes with it.

Each fresh peak ascended teaches something.

Fight scenes are hard, no matter what you do. You're trying to make it look like you're hurting someone without hurting them. It doesn't matter how big and strong the guy is that you're fighting or how small and feeble someone is that you're fighting. You don't want to hurt them. You're working with them.

We can empathize as deeply as we can empathize.

I think the writing on the wall is definitely there this year that this is probably our last year.

I grew up in Boca Raton, Florida - the worst place on earth.

I understand, certain scenes have to have a lot of takes. As an actor, I think it's quite nice to have a handful of takes, because you don't want to do it once or twice; I think once or twice sometimes is quite terrifying because you don't really feel like you've given them what you want.

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life thinking its stupid.

People have to realize that dieting is not a sprint, it's a marathon. If you celebrate the small victories, you will eventually win the war.

To be an original human, you must die to all labels.

That's my sense of how crime works: that it's not any kind of calculated evil driven by the devil, but just control disintegrating.

I could have easily been a statistic. Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., it was easy - a little too easy - to get into trouble. Surrounded by poor schools, lack of resources, high unemployment rates, poverty, gangs and more, I watched as many of my peers fell victim to a vicious cycle of diminished opportunities and imprisonment.

My father had retained an emotional affection for the ceremonial of his parental home, without allowing it to influence his intellectual freedom.

Agnosticism is the everlasting perhaps.