Quotes from Mat Kearney

Generally, the songs that are the scariest ones are the ones that people connect to.

Owl City is exactly as you'd imagine him. It's hard to have much on him. He's like a frightened bunny. I feel like if you yelled at him, he'd just dart to a corner of the room.

When I was in college, I wanted to study film. My first passion was to be a cinematographer. So maybe there's something innate in my music where it partners well with images.

When we tour, there's always this unique quality to every town you visit... Touring, you get a sense of a collective identity for different cities. That's one of the things I love about my job.

I would sit in my dorm room and write songs. I loved it. I was learning to sing and play guitar. I was becoming a musician. I was the beginner who somehow could write a song.

I've had moments in my career when I've made more money and had more success than at other times, but I've realized being happy has very little to do with any of that.

Somehow, my music really suits doctors making out in the syringe room.

I think coming from the Northwest is something that's born in your blood. On my mom's side, I'm, like, a sixth-generation Oregonian. My family came over in the covered wagons, 'Oregon Trail'-video-game style. Maybe the pioneer mentality runs in my blood because they were all pioneers.

It's a job, and it's challenging. But I love music and creating. That's why I got into music.

I am a micromanager, and I love being involved in every detail of my life, but in the big picture, you realize how little control you have. 'Air I Breathe' is about those moments of surrender where you get to something that is bigger than you, and you don't have answers for it.

I started as a writer. I didn't play music until late in life.

I was an English major, and I always wrote poems.

With 'City of Black & White,' I wanted a record that would make you feel good, that would sort of take you up in its hand and sweep you along.

Getting married and really digging in with another human being can point out your greatest strengths and your greatest weaknesses.

I think I have always made really beat-driven pop-rock records.

'City Of Black And White' was me trying to do something more mature, more adult contemporary.

I don't spend afternoons practicing my guitar to get better. I do read, though, to get inspiration for my lyrics.

There's this song called 'Brad Chester,' which is like the depths of my family. It comes from a very personal place.

I think the way I love talking about my faith is through my story because I think that's all we have to work with sometimes. I think it's the most moving way to share your story, too - is what you know, what you've seen and heard and tasted and felt.

There's something incredibly vulnerable about middle school for me. We're really impressionable during that period. The cement's still wet, so to speak, and a lot of things later in life are born during that season.

'Nothing Left to Lose' was an album that I wrote in my bedroom, and you don't know who is listening or who cares.

I've never shaped or crafted my music for any specific group of people. Whoever connects with it is fine with me. I don't care where they come from.

I never got too specialized but did like the Southern Gothic writers like William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor.

I'm actually named Matthew William Kearney: my middle name is named after my grandfather.