You work so hard at something to make sure that it's very pure and very genuine and very steadfast to who you are, so creative control for me is a big one. Thankfully, I've been able to retain 98% of it which I never really expected, so I'm very grateful to be able to control what I can.
It's been very humbling and very cool to see [that at] each show I tend to see more and more kids lock onto the new lyrics and every night they start to sing louder and louder and it's just been very exciting.
Stay in the Word. The moment you start letting go of that, you're on the road to compromise. Stay grounded, remain pure, keep your eyes fixed on Jesus.
When you listen to someone sing from inside their head, their same mix, and you listen to their voice as loud as they like it, or the track of the band as low as they like it, you can really hear all of the nuances and the mistakes if there are any.
You’ve got mountains of your own, I’ll bet on it. Take heart. Be encouraged. Remain steadfast. Hang on for dear life. You’ve got a better grip than you realize.
It's very cool for me to be able to get in an airplane and fly for fourteen hours and show up in a place I never thought I'd ever be and have kids in the same room singing these songs I'd written so far away. To me, that's so surreal.
I’ve been around many girls who have been super outgoing. And a lot of times, they would say to me, “Why are you so quiet? What’s wrong with you?” And I’m like, “I don’t know. That’s just the way I am.” So if I found the perfect girl she would totally get that and say, “You’re quiet, and that’s the way I love you.
I live alone in a house, so for me it's very good to just be able to re-charge and just disappear and escape from reality and that's usually when I write most of my lyrics and my songs. It's a very happy productive place.
When you write, produce, engineer and mix everything yourself, it tends to take a long time to do anything. And when you're a perfectionist little monster, it makes it even harder. But it's a blast and I wouldn't trade the opportunity for all the ice cream sandwiches in the universe.
Wars--and what is war except crime on a mass scale?--destroy rather than produce. The vandal that destroys a window causes not only the owner to bear the costs of replacing it, but costs those whom he planned on using that money to buy from. The same goes for wars. The warlords--of war and peace--destroyed so much, not only what existed, but all those new things that could have existed, if only individuals were left in peace.