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" The fact that I wasn't expected to read music at all and was absorbing everything by ear... it had a huge affect on the kind of musician that I became. "

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" In school I was painfully shy. But as soon as I had to get up in front of the class and give a book report, it was alarming - I'd suddenly be very articulate. "

" Usually bands with violins - it's this little, poorly amplified looking kind of futile on stage, and that's not the way that my music is put together. "

" My favorite literature to read is fairly dry history. I like the framework, and my imagination can do the rest. "

" I think I'm still a little too intense for my own good sometimes. "

" I've done my share of busking, and it's fun until it isn't. There are musicians in the subways that will make you cry, they're so good. "

" No, it's not dissatisfaction that inspires me to tinker with my songs, it's just restlessness. "

" Since I first picked up the violin, I've been very interested in tone and texture: I would have very visceral reactions to the texture of a snare drum or a pedal steel guitar or a violin. "

" I've always found that whatever you say about indie rock, it is the most inclusive genre or title for anything. It doesn't pin you down too much, like other labels would. It's just newer, it has less baggage. I'm happy to be in that category. "

" What you see with your eyes when you're making music is going to have a profound effect on what you hear. "

" I don't want technology to take me so far that I don't have to use my brain anymore. It's like GPS taking over and losing your internal compass. It's always got to be tactile, still organic. "

" I write a lot more when I'm happy, because you're hopeful, you're motivated. "

" Music as a social conduit has always been important to me. "

" You travel with the hope that something unexpected will happen. It has to do with enjoying being lost and figuring it out and the satisfaction. I always get a little disappointed when I know too well where I'm going, or when I've lived in a place so long that there's no chance I could possibly get lost. "

" I've always been fascinated and stared at maps for hours as a kid. I've especially been most intrigued by the uninhabited or lonelier places on the planet. Like Greenland, for instance, or just recently flying over Alaska and a chain of icy, mountainous islands, uninhabited. "

" The problem is, when you're working with orchestras, you only get the orchestra for about two hours before the performance to pull it all together, and that doesn't sound like a real collaboration. "

" What's cool about indie rock is that one band can do effectively the same thing as another band, and one band nails it, and the other one doesn't. I like that elusiveness. "

" Melodies are just honest. They can only be what they are. Words have the capacity for deception. They're all full of subtext, and some of them are cliche and overused and vernacular. They're tricky. All I can say is, words are tricky. "

" A day off after a show with no agenda in a foreign city is about the most fertile creative situation I can imagine. Just walking with nothing to do, killing time and hearing the sights and sounds of an unfamiliar place. "

" All the folks I play with come from jazz backgrounds or at least appreciate spontaneity within the parameters of a pop song. "

" I still kind of believe this absurd line that if you have to write it down, it's not worth remembering. "

" Well, my main instrument is violin, but I think of myself as a songwriter who happens to play violin. "

" Honestly, I didn't have the patience for biology or history in an academic sense, but I always liked the kind of big questions. "

" Maybe it's just, I've always been to the less traveled places, in any topic, whether it's history, I always like to just choose the most obscure topic. And I don't know why I have that impulse. I can't really explain it but I've been doing that since I was a little kid. "

" I am, in some sense, a writer. Even though I kinda downplay the word thing, I do enjoy writing sometimes. "