I don't think I would live outside of the Northwest. I think the quality of life in Portland is really good. People move from intense, high-powered jobs, and move to Portland, work half as much and live twice as good. They can afford bigger houses, or they can actually afford to buy a house, they can work the minimal amount and still get by. I think there's a really strong sense of community there. It's beautiful.

I'm interested in the crevices, and the grotesque, and the unsavory. That started out when I was young... I've never quite been able to shake that.

Rock Band is more like Stairmaster than it is like rock 'n' roll - it's the same steps with different degrees of difficulty.

I think it's very disheartening and undermining to focus on nostalgia or youthful sentimentality as the lens through which you view art and culture, because then you feel like everything good already happened. I really just try to be in the present with music and just find the things that are invigorating and make me feel happy to be alive right now.

I wrote so much about fandom and participation for NPR that I eventually realized my most fertile way of participating in music is to actually play it, at least in a way that made the most sense to me.

You do have to live through things, and to live through things is to observe want, and to observe lacking. Even if the hunger is a curiosity.

I'm kind of a hermit. it's almost easier for me to write about connection than to actually connect.