I've always said I write albums; I don't write random songs and then sort them out.

I have really low self-esteem, and it's not easy for me to put myself on an album cover.

I've always been interested in writing from other people's perspectives and other gender perspectives.

You gotta have friends, and it's really hard to have friends that don't operate on the same schedule as you or do the same kind of things you do, because they don't understand it. And then you realize that your friends - your real-life friends - it's not that they become fanboys of you but they become more interested in what you're doing than how you're doing.

I don't have the capacity to write stuff consciously. When I do, it's really awful.

Everything I do is 100% automation, which means I'm just doing it live.

When you listen to the Anthology of American Folk Music, or anything like that - a compilation of garage bands from the Northeast in the early '60s - you're not necessarily listening to the band and thinking about the lead singer, or the story of the group, or the context or the mythology of the group. You're just listening to the song and whether or not it has a hook.