When I was four, I wrote a song about falling into a black hole.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don’t really know what we’re doing and when we do, it doesn’t seem to help.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

I just wanted to be a songwriter. I did really not like the sound of my own voice.

It’s a pity that nobody has found an exploding black hole. If they had, I would have won a Nobel prize.

What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don’t really think that hard.

My production and songwriting and the environment around those vocals are not inspired by R&B at all.

Most of the time, songs that I write end up being finished in 30 minutes or less.

No one sells a song better than the person that wrote it.

I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.

It’s kind of like a challenge to myself to be able to hear somebody else’s hook and kind of interpret the words. Because my own hooks, I already know what I mean when I write them.

‚Nothin‘ on You‘ by B.o.B was the first song where I heard myself on the radio. I’d been trying my whole career to write a song like that, which incorporates live instruments with hip-hop and singing.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

I think that, whatever happens, I’m just happy I’ve written those songs and I’ve made an album. That’s really big for me, and I’m proud of that.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has endured as a form even in the download age because bands conform to a strict format, and work, often very productively, within the parameters.

But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

In my songs, I’m not saying something that’s never been said before. The have lyrics aren’t going to blow people away. It’s the emotion and the melody that drive it home.

Anxiety and spiritual searching have been consistent themes with me, and that figures into my worldview. But I tend to make my songs sound like relationship songs.

‚Bellyache‘ is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren’t real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don’t know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

I just want to keep writing music.

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it’s so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

I thought that I wrote songs and wrote music, and that was sort of what I thought I was best at doing. And because nobody else was ever doing my songs, I felt – you know, I had to go out and do them.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.

When I’m stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It’s a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

I always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn’t that spectacular.

I used to sing songs and write with my uncle, Bill Owens.

Lyrics are so important, but they’re really underrated.

When you write a song like ‚Forrest Gump,‘ the subject can’t be androgynous. It requires an unnecessary amount of effort.

I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that’s fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that’s fine. And it might not be right, because I’m the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It’s the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.

It doesn’t bother me when people try to deconstruct my songs – because at least they’re looking at the lyrics, and paying attention to the way the story is told.

The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

‚Mean‘ is a song I wrote about somebody who wrote things that were so mean so many times that it would ruin my day. Then it would ruin the next day. And it would level me so many times, I just felt like I was being hit in the face every time this person would take to their computer.

I’ve never written a song in my life. It’s all a big hoax.

Writing ‚We Are Never Getting Back Together‘ was one of the most hilarious experiences I have ever had in the studio because it just happened so naturally.

Songwriters, you have to work – you have to wait for residuals. You have to pray that the song’s going to be a hit. And then a year later, you might get a check.

I write songs about stuff that I can’t really get past personally – and then I write a song about it and I feel better.

The people in my songs are all me.

I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.

I’d like to do a completely off-the-wall collaboration. I would like one of my songs to be the hook to a rap song. That would be so much fun!

Every single one of the guys that I’ve written songs about has been tracked down on MySpace by my fans.

For some reason, I’m really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs.

You can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don’t have to be in love with anyone.

I wrote my first song at 12 and remember someone asking, ‚What were you going through at 12 that you could write about?‘ I get what you’re saying, but 11, 12, 13 were the hardest years of my life. You learn everything. You learn how horrible things feel.

I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

All of my songs are autobiographical.

I’ve always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks – you learn craft, you learn structure, all that – as you go.

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

I really wish I knew what I was doing because I’d be writing hit songs every minute.

My nails are my rhythm section when I’m writing a song all alone. Some day, I may cut an album, just me and my nails.