Quotes from Ben Gibbard

I like writing on piano and a computer, and a lot of 'Plans' came out of samples and vocal lines.

I've always had a soft spot for Phil Collins. He's a great vocalist.

When I'm old, I'd like to wake up in the morning and not really do anything - just be happy to exist. I'd like to look at my accomplishments and sit back and revel in my own achievement.

I remember hoping there'd be 10 people at a show in 1998 when there was an incredible write-up in the local weekly. I don't want to go back to that period of being obscure and having nobody know who I am, let alone have to struggle to get people to come to the show.

I read 'On The Road' in college. I was 18 or 19, and I had a particular quarter where I was taking biology, calculus, and physics. Those were my three classes. It wasn't a well-rounded schedule at all. It was hard, hard work, all the time - hours and hours and hours of homework.

It's like, how do you continue to make records that are representative of who you are that your fans will recognize as your band, while still trying to push things forward and present new sounds for people.

At this point in my life, I find myself obsessed with alternate paths I could've taken. I don't think about this with a sense of regret, but with a sense of wonder.

I have always been very open and earnest about some things in my life, some things that are not directly in my life, but they're twirling around me at the time.

Everybody has a language or code that they use with their wife or their girlfriend or boyfriend or what have you. It's a language aside from the language they have with strangers. I've always been maybe an abuser of alliteration, but I've always loved it and I like how those words sound together.

We tend to think of our idols as kind of superheroes; maybe less so today, given that people have a tendency to overshare on social media, but when I was growing up, all you knew about these people was what they allowed you to see - which was them doing superhuman things, up on stage in an arena with all these people going crazy.

At some point, I thought that, as I got older, I'd come to terms with a lot of things. I'd solve some big problems, and eventually I'd become content. It's almost more depressing to think that the older you get, the more your problems multiply.

There's a cinematic quality that happens in my mind when I hear something that really lands. An album is just a journal of a life moving through time.

I know that the Seattle my parents knew is not the Seattle I know and that these things exist in a state of constant flux and change. The hope is that at least some of that change can be for the better.

What we aspired to in 1998, we have wildly surpassed. And I know we all feel incredibly grateful and lucky this band has been able to have the life that it's had.

People always talk about how time flies; it's become sort of a colloquialism now. You don't really understand it until you reach your late 30s and early 40s - and I'm sure time will move even faster as I get older.

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

I'm not like a 90-mph fastball kind of guy, but I can hit 70 on radar gun. I hit 70 one time on a radar guy at one of those pitch-and-throw kind of things. I have a pretty good arm for somebody who's not a baseball player.

I think a lot of people who become music fans have that moment where they break from their parents' music, they break from the radio and MTV - at least in my generation, they did, and MTV isn't really a thing anymore. And you discover something that defines you, that is outside of the mainstream.

And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time.

I just rediscovered my guitar.

I think that the wonderful thing about music and about songs is that you can listen to a three-minute song whenever you feel you need it.

The second 'Postal Service' album is threatening to become the 'Chinese Democracy' of indie rock. It will come out eventually, or maybe it won't.

You can't please everybody all the time, but I think for the most part we tend to maintain a healthy level of self-reference to kind of make sure we continue to push things forward.

When you connect as many memories to your geography as I have, and then you see that geography change around you, you're forced to reckon with the passage of time.