The more walking-around money I have, the less I walk around.

The most successful stuff is sold to you as indispensable social information. The message in the music is, 'We are terribly, terribly slick and suave, and if you listen to us, you can probably get a leg up in society, too.'

A lot of young musicians get the money at the wrong time. They get it for something they don’t feel great about, and it’ll make you feel so bad it’ll destroy you and kill you.

I always went in with a very specific idea of the sound I wanted, and once I'd recorded I'd try and make it sell as much as I could, but I only went in thinking of a sound I wanted. So, it's no surprise to me that he got the hit and I didn't. But what I realized was that he did dress it up nicely, and my god, he does sing on key well.

I never say never about anything.

When punk began to be a genre, people were going to go out and try to mine it. Some of the better groups, like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, were very artificial.

And if somebody's going to produce me, they should be producing my sound for me. And that's something I have to come up with myself.