What I did with my first records was, my writing process was that I didn't touch any instruments to write it, so I was making it all on the computer, and really the arrangements were coming first, the intricate thing.

Everybody's got a dark side, but mine doesn't include being around people who are mean.

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 was like the roadie, I was carrying gear, checking things in at airports, making sure they had flowers backstage and interfacing with promoters who were sometimes really nice and sometimes a little seedy. It was a great apprenticeship, to be in the music industry.

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."

I'm a bit of a vagabond - a person who loses time and space because you don't know where you are.

I wouldn't say I'm a very technical [guitar] player. I'm more intuitive - it's always more about chasing an abstraction.