I think one of my pursuits over the years is trying to answer the question of 'what else can you do with a voice other than stand in front of a microphone and sing?'

Something I’ve realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we’re smart about it.

The dominant theory coming out of Hollywood is that peoples' attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and they need more stimulation.

I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function.

I despise computers in many ways. I think they’re hopelessly underevolved and overrated.

I got an amazing 10-CD set, it's the music that Alan Lomax recorded in Haiti in 1936. And what's incredible is how fantastic the drummers are and how off-the-grid they are. The liveliness is astonishing; they're just totally alive, these recordings. It's very interesting, to me, to be reminded of that, that there was a time when things were not that tight.

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when - and he won't necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.