For the longest time, I was just playing music and not really expecting any success - just kind of doing it because I liked doing it. While doing that, I went on a lot of shitty tours, playing to nobody, so I think it makes me appreciate it. Our band the New Pornographers have been popular for a few years now, but it still shocks me. I remember thinking we were hugely popular when we sold 15,000 records, and now this one sold 30,000 in two weeks. I'm grateful for the whole thing.

Visualize success, but don't believe your eyes.

I've always liked using flutes and clarinets. Any time I can use those, I'm really happy.

Have you ever walked down the streets of New York and been given the right of way? It's an amazing feeling.

For the longest time, I was just playing music and not really expecting any success - just kind of doing it because I liked doing it. While doing that, I went on a lot of shitty tours, playing to nobody, so I think it makes me appreciate it. Our band the New Pornographers have been popular for a few years now, but it still shocks me. I remember thinking we were hugely popular when we sold 15,000 records, and now this one sold 30,000 in two weeks. I'm grateful for the whole thing.

As a musician, my job is incredibly easy, and it's a good one, but I've got to work at it occasionally.

Sometimes I'm trying to communicate a feeling. Sometimes I can't piece it together into any kind of coherant thesis. I'm just trying to evoke some kind of mood, and put some kind of idea in somebody's head. If Marshall McLuhan or Harold Innis were looking at it, they would tell you that the genre of rock music isn't the best way to deliver a political message because it distorts it, it makes it into entertainment. Perhaps the best political message is just to speak it to somebody. I think that's something I'm always writing about in songs, just how to mediate, how to present something.