It's just a joy to be able to work with a lot of different musicians. When you play with great musicians, whether they're schooled or self-taught, they keep you on your toes.

I've always littered my songs with jokes. You might need to dig a little deeper to find the humor, but I would totally object to being some kind of distraught personality. I've never tried to attach myself to that.

I don't need to control anything. Even with romantic partnerships, I don't need to control anyone.

The writing of the record didn't take long, because I just have a huge stack of papers and I just pluck from the stack. It took a long time because it's very expensive to make records; in fact, I think it's a complete rip-off.

Thank god we don't know a lot about William Shakespeare or Moses or Homer or Lautréamont. These are the best guys we got, and their art is powerful because they're mysterious. Once biographical information contaminates your consciousness, it's impossible to erase it and look at someone's work the same way again.

Making music and art is about expressing something that's universally human, maybe even beyond human, at best. To make it about the artist and to dwell upon biographical information can only make it singular, and I am really, really disgusted by that.

That's the thing about inspiration, it just smacks you upside the head, you can't plan for it. It comes like a stranger in the night; you never know when it's going to come or leave, and you just have to deal with the in-between moments because there's nothing you can really do about it.