Elvis transcends his talent to the point of dispensing with it altogether.

Patriotism in America, as I understand it, is a matter of suffering, when the country fails to live up to its promises, or actively betrays them.

It may be that the most interesting American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and then to learn something of the value of those limits

Hearing things like 'Wake Up' by Lora Logic, or the Raincoats' 'In Love' - that was something I wasn't prepared for. I couldn't hear anything that came before it in the music, and I didn't want to. I was absolutely in love with its out-of-nowhereness.

What’s the impulse behind art? It’s saying in whatever language is the language of your work, “If I could move you as much as it moved me … if I can move anyone a tenth as much as that moved me, if I can spark the same sense of mystery and awe and surprise as that sparked in me, well that’s why I do what I do.”

I want another idea, another project, but you can't make them up. They show up.

It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.