To me, craft work is the ultimate. Maybe I got this idea from the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, who was employed as a sculptor to the state and church, making coins and things. While he admired Michelangelo, he also made fun of his spiritual angst with art.

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.

I don't like going to the studio. It just seems too cold. There's no crowd to react to, or share anything with; it's just talking into a microphone that's going into a computer.

I love songs because by nature they are concise; they sum up. I try to use as few words as possible. It's usually funnier that way, anyway.

I grew up in the suburbs and was raised on rap radio, so it took me a long time to stumble upon the acoustic guitar as a resource for anything.

I don't care much about politics. That kind of witchcraft I stay away from because people end up dead. I'd rather die for music.

As it turns out, it's really expensive to make movies, much more than records.