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

‚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.

The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I’m just like, ‚Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do‘.

Most country songs, certainly all the stuff I’ve written, are stories driven by characters.

I’ve never been a very prolific person, so when creativity flows, it flows. I find myself scribbling on little notepads and pieces of loose paper, which results in a very small portion of my writings to ever show up in true form.

I always have to be writing.

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

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

What I like about music is the songs you can remember the lines of in a single second.

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.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg – I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

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

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.

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.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

When I heard ‚Jesus, Take the Wheel,‘ I was like, OK. Some people look at it as a song written for an American Idol, Carrie Underwood, who is wonderful. But when you’re a songwriter listening to a song, you hear something else. I heard that song, and wow.

When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‚Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.‘

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

I had writer’s block for almost a year.

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works.

I ain’t here to argue about his facial features. Or here to convert atheists into believers. I’m just trying to say the way school need teachers the way Kathie Lee needed Regis that’s the way yall need Jesus.

Image, lyrics, content, storytelling, cohesive body of work – that’s Prince to me.

‚House of Balloons‘ was special because I had no deadlines, and nobody knew me, so there were no expectations. Spent a year making it perfect. Every song had at least, like, 7 different versions to them before picking the right one.

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

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.

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.

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical – one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.

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

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

All I do is make music.

These are all personal crises, I’m sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It’s as simple as that.

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

Literally wrote ‚Starboy‘ in 30 minutes.

The song ‚Innocent‘ is a song that I wrote about something that really, really emotionally impacted me.

You gotta make sure the listener is listening to you, so if you put it into a song, often times, if the song is striking enough, then you can really deliver the story most effectively while keeping the ear of the listener the whole time.

Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so.

I start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.

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.

I still have my first paycheck. It was just, I think, a dollar or two that I got when I started as a songwriter with BMI, and I had some songs there that I had through the company, and in the mail I got this big old check for, like, a dollar and a half or something. Somebody had recorded one of my songs.

When I started making my own records, I had this idea of drowning out the singer and putting the rest in the foreground. It was the background that interested me.

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.

I’m not afraid to write my feelings in songs.

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

I felt like I had a really bad case of writer’s block… Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can’t get it out, I start feeling bad about myself – a lot of self-loathing.

I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.

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

The people in my songs are all me.

I might just write a novel next. I don’t know!

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people.

If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.

I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny. And wonderful.

Making a film is like putting out a fire with sieve. There are so many elements, and it gets so complicated.

‚Unforgiven‘ is probably an example of a script that I liked right away but thought, ‚This is great, but I’d like to do this when I’m older.‘ So I stuck it in the drawer for ten years and then took it out.

I push myself in a lot of aspects when I write a song. I write a piece and where most people would stop and say, ‚Oh, that’s the hook right there,‘ I’ll move that to the first four bars of the verse and do a new hook.

I don’t really get into a big intellectual analysis of why I am going to do a certain script or not.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

I feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is – I don’t even want to say that it’s mine, because it’s yours.

I can say I’d honestly rather be happy than have 30 to 40 songs that I’ve written about these thrilling, exciting, horrible, unhappy times.

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

I write music every day.