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

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.

I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change.

In common use almost every word has many shades of meaning, and therefore needs to be interpreted by the context.

It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups.

My life has been a continuous fulfillment of dreams. It appears that everything I saw and did has a new, and perhaps, more significant meaning, every time I see it. The earth is good. It is a privilege to live thereon.

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.

When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.

I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.

But the way people commonly use the word nowadays it means something all of whose parts are mutually interdependent - not only for their mutual action, but for their meaning and for their existence.

The miracle of light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slowly moving, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades. It is a river of grass.

Alabama citizens, like the vast majority of Americans, respect and value the meaning of decency, and appreciate public institutions that reflect the common values of our society.

It is my intention to present - through the medium of photography - intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators.

I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.

Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.

Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.

She made the decision that her existence had lost its meaning. And you cannot judge that.

Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.

All of us want to have meaning in our lives and want to feel like we're doing something that makes a difference. I believe we're doing that in the Justice Department.

To many, Homer may appear lazy and a loser, but he's just much misguided. He's boorish, sure, but well meaning and, I guess, the one thing we have in common is the pursuit of lousy diets.