I had brief glimpses of emotional catharsis while writing. I remember reading something Philip Roth wrote about how he writes every single day, but it's almost as if he has amnesia every morning - he has almost zero confidence that anything will come but he just sits down and plugs away. And at the end of the day it feels like a miracle: "How did I do that?" I had a similar experience where it was just about putting in the hours and being present.

I have the weirdest job. It's not every day that you get to stand up onstage and unload every ounce of your misanthropic bile onto a crowd of people, and they're like, "Cool! Hit us again!"

I was a lusty kid who loved Tennessee Williams. Sexy plays. [For musicians] there are so many that it's hard just to say one. Certain things, like the first time you hear A Love Supreme, you're floored. It takes whatever you were listening to and blows a hole in it.

I got offstage and was just looking at my hands, and they were shaking. I was like, 'I wanna kill someone! What's happening?'

Every part of every song can have a totally different musical sound, because otherwise if I wanted to go from a verse of one song to the chorus of another, I'd have to go: "Uh, okay, press that pedal and then... press that pedal, and then press that pedal off."

Putting your ego aside and confronting your weaknesses and just letting things happen is hard. Not to use a Scientology term, but it's difficult to do an emotional or an artistic audit.

I wanted to give the songs a run for their money, to see if they stood on their own without a lot of accoutrements. It made more sense - and it was easier, too - to go out alone and see if these songs could get in a couple of fistfights and still be standing.