You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.

I sense the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe--but just as irrational as sympathetic magic when looked at in a typically scientific way. I wouldn't be surprised if poetry--poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs--is how the world works. The world isn't logical, it's a song.

The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world's popular music is a good thing, for the most part.

It's more about the stuff you think about when you're getting from place to place on a bicycle than it is about actually riding the bicycle.

There's something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There's something that invites all this obsessive behavior.

I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

One knew in advance that life in New York would not be easy‚ but there were cheap rents in cold-water lofts without heat‚ and the excitement of being here made up for those hardships. I didn't move to New York to make a fortune.