I seem to get the best work when I'm angry and depressed and alienated.

You can get really good reads on your dreams if you think of every character in them as actually being you.

My family, before the divorce, moved several times, and after that we moved a whole bunch more times, and so I don't have an anchor to a single place. Probably as a result of that, I'm a little more attenuated to when people do feel close identification to place, whether they say it out aloud or not. I think that there's a sort of local patriotism that is deeper than national patriotism.

Back in the 90s, if you did mail order in music, you could make a good living doing it if you could hustle.

I think taking too long to work on a record you sort of lose some of the feeling, so I write as fast as I can; it's just this manic phase where I'm by myself and or on tour and I write and I write. And I send them to the guys, and we start planning our studio ventures.

You learn to present dark things without including their ability to harm, treasuring them for what they are.

Young people like to feel self-righteous, like they're on the right side of things.