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.

Even the most dismal and hopeless-sounding Wilco music, to my ears, has always maintained a level of hope and consolation.

I always found the concept of a tortured artist distasteful.

I didn't want to admit that I was falling into a cliche.

I don't believe every download is a lost sale.

I don't think you can be good in life without acknowledging the part of you that isn't good.

I guess I don't think there's any reason to feel guilty about having joy in your life, regardless of how bad things are in the world.

I just try to get inside the song and imagine what comes next.

I think art is a consolation regardless of its content. It has the power to move and make you feel like you're not.

I think somehow you need to get to a certain point in your life where the notion of failure is absurd.

I've been buying instruments and musical gear for a long time.

Sometimes it's liberating to confront horrible things in lyrics as a way to master the shadow-self that exists in everyone.

Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator.

I always think I don't have any songs, I don't have anything I'm working on, and I get in the studio and realize there are 20 things I'm thinking about. It's just kind of second nature.

I don't think there is anything hard at all about having a lot of songs. It makes it easier to be less precious about them, and know that everybody's going to want to work on some of them.

I have always thought it was important to maintain some connection for myself to what it takes to make a song work by myself, to put a song across to an audience by myself.

I like making songs up. Whether or not they're great songs or good songs, whatever. It's something I've always done, and I definitely feel like I've gotten better at it.

I was never at my best when I was at my worst. When I did do good stuff in the past, it was because I was able to transcend the parts of my being that weren't healthy.

I've been obsessed with seeing life through music. My records, my relationship with records, my relationship with rock stars, everything that surrounds it, has been really one of the only ways that I ever started to understand the world.

Stop trying to treat music like it's a tennis shoe, something to be branded. If the music industry wants to save money, they should take a look at some of their six-figure executive expense accounts. All those lawsuits can't be cheap, either.