Quotes from Ben Gibbard

Living this life in the same sorta way that Kerouac lived, you get to hang out at shows and drink and you're able to not really face reality and adulthood the way most of my friends are.

We never sit down before we start making a record and talk about this new sonic palette that we are going to try to explore. We always let the record kind of reveal itself to us over time.

To set the record straight for the God knows millionth time, we certainly didnt sign to Atlantic just for the money.

Death Cab always gets right of first refusal on everything I write, but I tend to know early on. There's a song that has yet to be released - it might come to light at some point in the near future - that when I was writing it, I was really proud of it lyrically.

I want so badly to believe that there is truth, that love is real. And I want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd.

Hall & Oates is one of the few musical groups as satisfying now as it was back then. There's something incredibly musically satisfying about their songs. Nothing has diminished my love for them.

I feel that we are currently living in a world that is similar to late '50s, early '60s kind of world.

We all pine for a time in life when things were simpler. Even when they weren't necessarily simpler, hindsight makes them look a lot simpler. The reality of it was that it wasn't.

I don't feel that all the great songs have been written. I do feel that where we are now, certainly with rock & roll music, is that so much of it is variations on themes. But I think that it's one's particular creativity and individuality that comes out within that variation on a particular theme that makes a song great.

I would much rather hear a song that's written from a fresh perspective, using ideas that have existed in rock & roll for 50 years, than something that is incredibly abrasive to my ears but is new.

When I look back at 2003, it was the best year I've ever had creatively: having 'Transatlanctism' and 'Give Up come' out in the course of six months. I'll never have another year like that.

I still love 'The Cure' more than almost any other band. But they were really, truly like the first band that I really loved and felt was mine, you know. At a pivotal time in my life when I was 13, 14 years old.

I was literally just going and applying for jobs, and I couldn't get a job, and I was getting more and more broke, and you find yourself groveling for jobs you don't even want.

My goal as a songwriter now is to simply write some memorable turns of phrase.

I'm a war of head versus heart, it's always this way. My head is weak, my heart always speaks, before I know what it will say.

I think a very clear cut example of - dare I say - plagiarism is the Sam Smith-Tom Petty situation, where you have a song that is flagrantly... it is the hook from one song being used for another song. To me, that was a very obvious example of plagiarism. If somebody had done that to me, I would probably take a similar course of action.

I love bummer songs.

I always try to write the best song I can in the moment, and those songs are often going to end up on Death Cab for Cutie records. I don't set out to write a solo song or write a band song. I just write, and where that songs ends up is kind of TBD.

I've covered Avril Lavigne. I like good pop songs, and I don't think there should be any kind of preconceptions about where good pop songs come from.

The songwriting of Hall & Oates is deceptively complex. There are a number of key changes that pass you by as you're listening to the song because they're so seamless and clever.

If you're going through a difficult time, and there's a piece of music that speaks to you - be it musically or lyrically or both - you are almost always able to access that music. You're always able to sit down with it.

When we moved to Seattle, everybody kind of disappeared into different corners of the city and it was a very difficult time for the band.

I think the narratives on 'Trans,' 'Plans,' and 'Narrow Stairs' moved away from the way I wrote on the first couple of records, which was a lot more impressionistic. I was writing those songs in my early 20s, so I thought I was being more clear than I actually was.

For 'Narrow Stairs', the majority of the songs I brought in were guitar songs - songs we could sit in a room and just play. I can honestly say I had more fun and felt more inspired on this record than anything that we had done in a long time.