“When you’re 22 years old, everything’s intense. Nowadays, the writing just comes more from an attempt to understand than from anger.”
“Honestly, human beings don’t need to do anything. Every human being on this planet is completely different. Nothing anyone else says is going to work exactly like they think it works.”
“It didn’t have anything to do with theology. It didn’t have anything to do with doctrine. It didn’t have anything to do with the academics of Christianity. It had everything to do with the heart of the Father breaking for these girls who are lied to and deceived and are having their destiny stolen, so that people can make a little bit of profit at their expense.”
“That’s where we are. That’s where the other side is. Once people cross that bridge and they get scared, they want to run back. They’re upset because they find things on the other side of the river they didn’t think would be there.”
“If people want to know me or they want to follow me or admire what I do, it’s not going to come in the form of me taking a photo of a meal or a cup of coffee and putting that on the Internet. I would much rather people read the lyrics that I write, see my performance at the Prada show, or read the stuff that I’ve been writing.”
“The day I stopped believing in God was the day that God didn’t answer my prayers that the frickin’ Looney Tunes squad would come out of my TV with Michael Jordan and be my friends. I did meet Charles Barkley once. Wait. Twice.”
“When this band started I was 16. Now I’m 23. The older lyrics were just written based around bands I idolized at that age, just gory and disgusting. This album was really easy for me because I decided I wanted to write about real life.”
“I remember just crying. I didn’t know why. I just started crying, thinking about being totally given up on. To still have maybe 30, 40, 50 years left, but according to society, you’re done. There’s no value for who you are.”
“I would lay in my bunk and I would shake and I would call my wife and I’d have all these thoughts about her getting in accidents and just the worst things you could possibly imagine.”
“The Word of God is living and active and it pushes us to meet the real God, and you’ve got to know the real God and what he’s like – now, in this day and age. He’s the same yesterday, today and forever.”
“I could really care less about how many people think we’re cool. That’s not why I wrote the songs. I literally wrote them to keep my head on straight and be honest with myself in a lot of ways, because I had never been honest with myself before.”