You realize time isn't just a period that you tell a story within - it becomes a major character in the film. There is no beginning, middle, end because there is always stuff beginning and ending simultaneously.

I've never been drawn to concert DVDs because they take away the part of the equation that's most important to seeing a live show: getting jostled around and feeling the energy in the room. I definitely didn't want to make one of those.

Musically, I didn't relate to Berlin. There seemed to be a lot of machine music made there - I don't think I saw a stringed instrument in two years.

I didn't really get London until I read Dickens. Then I was charmed to death by it.

Any kind of anthemic song, for the most part, they're on the positive side of things. It's not hard to identify when a melody is just one degree too complicated or one degree too simple and where that line of pop memorability lies.

I just went to Europe, spent a year traveling, and then I came home with a finished album and said, "Hey everyone I'm back!" I gave everyone their lighters from Luxembourg, gave them the postcards from Italy and Rome, then said, "Hey look, I made a record, too" and played it for them. The general reaction was shock, because it was so different from what they've known me to do.

When I stopped touring, it was like trying to stop a bullet train or a giant lead ball falling from a 100 stories up - it's momentum and it doesn't just stop. I drew a line in the calendar and made it a brick wall and just stopped dead. There was no other way. It would've taken another 100 years to slow down slowly. I had to let myself imagine a calendar with no lines; when every single day is being predetermined six months in advance, there's no more fluidity to time.