You think about, like, [20th-century classical composers] Alban Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern sitting around in some living room in Vienna and being like, "We are the end of music. We are the end of this tradition. Music is done."

The idea of letting a recording be a moment in time appealed to me. With digital recording, it's easy to create a perfect text of whatever song you have.

It's a weird job because making music or writing a song is a personal thing... and it kind of has to be. You can always tell when people are faking.

I feel like the world is super different now than it was in 2009. And to get at something that's somewhat darker, harsher, rougher, and a bit more challenging feels right.

Sometimes when you're on tour, it feels like you're living the same day over and over again.

I love that, for Kanye [West], there's no difference between the epic and the personal. That makes him sound like a really grandiose douche - which, I don't think anyone, himself included, could contest - but at the same time, it's really amazing. I love the scope of his perfectionism.

I do feel like the hardest thing is to do something simple and tap into whatever remains of our common language rather than cultivating your own willfully esoteric vocabulary.