I know some people really try to avoid music when they're writing and recording, but I am very inspired by so many different musicians, and I need to learn. I sit around and try to play along to certain songs that I really love. It helps you explore new territory. I don't think I listen to enough.

I didn't want to make a record that was just guitar and voice, that was just the technology available to me. At the time, I remember thinking, "I am making a Faust album." That didn't translate.

I hate having my photograph taken and I try to keep that in mind when I'm photographing other people. But the best photos that I've taken are the ones when people have forgotten that I'm there. If I'm in a recording studio with a musician, for example, maybe I'm not photographing them in the middle of a take but I can just get that stolen moment of them resting and they glance over to me.

People want to be successful, and they want to be acknowledged for what they do. Sometimes they make really great art and aren't. Historically, the best artists weren't. But their work survived.

As anthropomorphic and surreal people have said my early writing was, to me it was really stock and almost banal in the sense that it was just description, the poetry of comparing: "Your feet are like A, and your eyes like B."

Of course, before the internet people found records, too. You can still do it. It's just that people like to make the least amount of effort as possible.

The best New York in the world is driving down the [Pacific Coast Highway] listening to the Velvet Underground. That's the best time I've ever been to New York.