During those formative times, I really didn't know what was going on, and I was sort of torn in a thousand different directions with how I felt about what I was doing.

At 35, I'm thinking, Oh, I don't have any of that initial inspiration that I had before, all that angst. I always thought I would burn out very quickly.

The things that keep me awake at night are things like textures and instrumentation and plotting out what things are going to do and what the sounds are that I'm trying to capture.

I've kind of gotten more timid. I used to be fearless - at a certain point I didn't care about what anybody thought. I had all the answers and I could have been as bad as I wanted to be. But nowadays I just want to be good and make people happy.

I've learned that I shouldn't shrink from success. Though honestly I thought they'd be knocking on my door years ago.

My music already has this oldish kind of quality to it, like you don't necessarily know what era it was recorded in, so it all kind of felt surreal and weird. Night after night when I played live, I was really trying to figure it out in real time, and I still don't know what effect I'm going for or what effect I actually achieve. Looking back, I feel like it would be arrogant of me not to appreciate the fact that I've been able to do whatever I want and still have an audience come see me.

I do enjoy my solo time ... I want to stay home and do soundtracks and watch TV in my underwear with a keyboard on my lap and just be a couch potato.