It doesn't necessarily matter if I'm onstage or not. I just find the communal experience of a rock concert, or any type of music performance, achieves a kind of transcendence that I associate with spirituality. It's the closest thing to what I think people expect church to be like. Or maybe just what I've always thought church should be. You lose yourself, and at the same time come to the realization or understanding that you're part of something bigger than yourself.

When I did do good stuff in the past, it was because I was able to transcend the parts of my being that weren't healthy.

I don't like being in public with headphones on. I don't know how people can do it. It seems like you're so cut off from your environment. I feel like I'd get hit by a car.

I'm usually pretty happy. I don't ever really get disturbed in any way, or feel like I need to go back and change something.

If someone uses the amount of time I spend in the public eye as criteria for what my music could possibly mean to them, they probably should take a long, hard look in the mirror and figure out why they need to think they're so special. Because I don't think anybody is that special.

I have always thought it was important to maintain some connection for myself to what it takes to make a song work by myself, to put a song across to an audience by myself.

Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator.