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Very often, writing a song is a process that happens to me rather than one that I instigate. I feel a song coming on and, like a sneeze; I wait for it until it comes.

Even when I don't think I'm writing, I'm writing. There's some part of my brain geared toward making songs up, and I know it's collecting things and I know when I get a moment to be by myself, that's when they come out.

I just write songs whenever I feel like it, whenever they come to me.

I feel like every time I write a song, it feels like the first time I wrote a song. It's just as hard; it doesn't get easier, but that's why I love it: because it's a challenge every time. I also feel like I'm learning new ways.

I can't say that I'm always writing in my head but I do spend a lot of time in my head writing or coming up with ideas. And what I do usually is write the music and melody and then, you know, maybe the basic idea. But when I feel that I don't have a song or just say, God, please give me another song. And I just am quiet and it happens.

There's this element of surprise when you're writing songs, like it's something outside of you that you get to be part of. And it's just exciting. And that's why I keep writing - because I like that feeling.

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.

Sometimes when I write songs, I don't know what they're about, and it just suddenly comes to me.

I realized that I started writing songs to make people feel how I felt, rather than just making them feel something. That's not the way I should do things.

A lot of the music I write is about love. Sometimes I won't understand how I am feeling until I write a song about it.