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You have to live what you write, or you have to know it. There are exceptions, like story songs, where you just have to have your facts straight. But I think you don't have to live a hard life to be a good or interesting songwriter.

The cool thing about being a songwriter, or a writer, I guess, in general, you can take on a lot of different things, experience a lot of different things, just by writing about them.

As a songwriter, I'm not necessarily writing about myself or my life.

Every song I write is autobiographical and is about people, and that's one of the things that gets complicated. You have to decide where's your place as a songwriter.

Songwriting is like editing. You write down all this stuff - all this bad, stupid stuff - and then you have to get rid of everything except the very best.

I didn't mean to be a songwriter; I just was writing for fun, you have all day to do it. I was homeless so that's all I had to do.

Sometimes when you're a songwriter, you kind of have this egotistic thing: you just want to write something that you love, and you don't care about if people like it or not, but personally, I want to write something that people can jive to.

When you write a song, the goal is not to convey the details of your life. You should write a memoir or something if that's what you're going to do.

I try to write life and not songs. People live life, and when you write life, you're going to mess around and touch somebody's heart, and they'll relate to you and what you're singing about.

As a songwriter, you try your best to write a good song, and you like nothing better than hearing a good song. It's easy to admire a great song, and you want to share out of enthusiasm.