If I could go to Kabul and not die, I would go back to Afghanistan as soon as I could. And, that was the most interesting place that I've been to.

I'm just shallow and self-interested, and don't get out much because I'm afraid of real commitments.

I mean Black Flag happened. I was lucky. I don't think I could have put together something with one percent of that oomph on my own.

You don't have to twist my arm to work.

Like a lot of inwardly drawn young people, I spent a lot of time in libraries. At my high school, I often spent my lunch breaks there.

The music kind of takes care of itself because we've done all that as preproduction in the practice room. So by the time it gets onstage, each song has about one hundred hours of way too much mothering gone into it. So when you see us play live, that is the product of ninety days of practice, over a year of writing, listening to demos on the weekends after practice.

I'm usually busy - if you call me at the house, I get about four phone calls there a year - I'm usually running around the house with a pen in my mouth holding onto something, folding it, or doing something to it, and it's always a bad time.