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" Hopefully, reading and being around great literature inspires me to write songs, but I'm not sure about that. "

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" The first year I moved to Nashville, I started playing these songwriter nights with people like Nickel Creek, Duncan Sheik, and even Ryan Adams... That was the first place I really started playing music, and I had to really step up my game. Really quick. Or get kicked off the stage. "

" Owl City is exactly as you'd imagine him. It's hard to have much on him. He's like a frightened bunny. I feel like if you yelled at him, he'd just dart to a corner of the room. "

" There are a lot of great recording artists, like Jack White and Jack Johnson, who stay confined inside a very small box, but I'm more like Bon Iver, who recorded an album with programmed drums, and the next record was totally organic. I get that. "

" I think I have always made really beat-driven pop-rock records. "

" I love Bruce Springsteen's writing, but I grew up on '90s hip hop, like Tribe Called Quest. "

" There's this song called 'Brad Chester,' which is like the depths of my family. It comes from a very personal place. "

" Paul Simon is the king! "

" I thought my second record was good, but it didn't have that smash hit we did on the first one that somehow found its way onto tons of formats of radio stations. "

" All of my acoustic playing came from my songwriting. All of the chords I've learned and all of the voicings I play them in are a direct result of composing. "

" I would sit in my dorm room and write songs. I loved it. I was learning to sing and play guitar. I was becoming a musician. I was the beginner who somehow could write a song. "

" When I was in college, I wanted to study film. My first passion was to be a cinematographer. So maybe there's something innate in my music where it partners well with images. "

" I don't know how much I'm connected to the hip-hop scene, but I definitely lend from that urgency. "

" More than any other instrument, the relationship between an acoustic guitar and a microphone is super-important. The kind of mics that you use and your placement of the mics to the guitar can radically alter your sound. "

" Even on tour, where I perform songs from 'City Of Black And White,' I still do songs from 'Nothing Left To Lose.' I never turned my back on that material. On some albums, you change - that's all. The trick is to follow your heart and do what feels right. "

Black And White

" I was always into poetry and writing. So the urgency of spoken word is something that really has always appealed to me. "

" When my first record came out, it was in the middle of the real Muse, Keane, British thing, and that beat-driven thing wasn't really that cool at the moment. "

" It's been awesome going indie. I don't need to be on a major label. I love not having to walk into a specific radio person's office to try to convince someone to play my songs. At the end of the day, it's more work, but I've discovered that I like to get my hands dirty. "

" I was an English major, and I always wrote poems. "

" I can't help but do things my own way. "

" With 'City of Black & White,' I wanted a record that would make you feel good, that would sort of take you up in its hand and sweep you along. "

" Money definitely does not equal success in recording. "

" I didn't start writing music until I was a sophomore in college. I would steal my roommate's guitar and sit on the front porch and kind of blend this weird spoken word and these little melodies over simple chords; that really started my whole journey as a musician. "

" New Yorkers are historically tough crowds. "

" I think coming from the Northwest is something that's born in your blood. On my mom's side, I'm, like, a sixth-generation Oregonian. My family came over in the covered wagons, 'Oregon Trail'-video-game style. Maybe the pioneer mentality runs in my blood because they were all pioneers. "

" I didn't know music would end up being my job, but I loved it so much I wanted to do it every day. "

" When 'Young Love' came out, I was really excited, and it has been really special. "

" I never wanted to be on an exclusively Christian label. "

" I think you can hear all my hip hop influences in 'Just Kids.' "

" I'm a '90s music kid. "

" I never got too specialized but did like the Southern Gothic writers like William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor. "