Part of why I started a band was due to feelings of shyness and social ineptitude. I saw it as some way of being able to interact with people from a safe distance.

I'd been thinking I'd have to learn how to play really well, but obviously the message of punk was that you just learn three chords in a week and you're away.

Pornography takes all the reality out of sex and Disney does that to family life.

[Jeffrey Lewis is] The best lyricist working in the US today.

You know when you're thinking about what you want to be when you grow up, or how you want your life to pan out. I couldn't imagine anything better than living in a hotel so you'd never have to worry about washing up, making the bed, anything like that, and having a servant to come in and play all your favourite TV programmes.

You try and imagine what it must have been like to first see something moving on a screen. It must have blown your mind, because up to then life went by and there was no way to capture it. You could only get one instant and you didn't get the movement. So it's like having a bit of control over time really, because it's happening in real time or what seems to be real time, and then you can play it backwards and you can watch things again and again.

Unless you're living on the street and surviving on a diet of discarded turkey drumsticks, there's no point in being gloomy. We've spent too long trying to cheer ourselves up by spending money on brightly coloured things we don't really need. We've stopped using our imaginations.