You really only understand whether a song's good or not when you properly play it out in public for the first time.

You can always have it better. If you try... [This is the right attitude:] Never to feel [completely] satisfied, always to want to do something better!

You're letting such a fragile side of yourself out when you're creating or writing music. To do that with people who are almost strangers would seem very strange to me. I think that we're very lucky that we're quite close. To us, it's almost like the band is the grandest possible adventure you can go on with your friends. It's really really exciting.

You can't write for the cultural environment - if you do that, by the time it comes out, that cultural environment has passed. You have to be aiming for something that's original - that's the only way you can have any kind of impact.

Why play a chord when you can play one note?

There's a character that I play onstage, and I can't let him loose in the supermarket when I'm buying my beans on toast.

No matter what you do, if you're trying to create something new, your environment has a massive impact on you.