So there's no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn't necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn't necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

Creative work is more accurately a machine that digs down and finds stuff, emotional stuff that will someday be raw material that can be used to produce more stuff, stuff like itself - clay to be available for future use.

People will do odd things if you give them money.

My favorite time of day is to get up and eat leftovers from dinner, especially spicy food.

I think it's really hard to make songs that pursue an agenda. You can kind of do it a little bit through a character, so the character gives voice to something or their story, the story of the character tells you something, but, for me anyway, it's really hard to write directly about politics.

I don't believe that crime, danger and poverty make for good art. That's bullshit.

I've been in beautiful landscapes where one is tempted to whip out a camera and take a picture. I've learned to resist that.