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When I started The Shins, it really was just me, alone, but it was still The Shins. I was totally recording stuff and writing songs as The Shins and all of that. So the beginning inception of the whole thing was some sort of a lie, I guess.

My attempt at really doing classic sort of songwriting is Shins stuff.

Writing has always had that tactile quality for me. It's a physical experience.

My feeling is that writing is, for me, a pathological condition. That could sound like a mystical experience, and it may be a mystical experience, but I have learnt just to go with it.

To write something you have to feel it and know it, and that's not comfortable.

At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it.

I have to feel what I'm writing, right down to the core.

Frankly, I have always dreaded writing - there always seemed to be pain involved, unpleasant self-examination and a lot of fear.

I don't really have a metaphor for how I write, but it kinda feels like chipping away at a big dark object that I can't really see.

I've always written about things that cause me to feel something.