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.

You're not really going to know what a place is like 'til you've lived there a few years - you sort of just have to go with your gut.

I grew up in Southern California, so the whole concept of a local music history is still kinda novel to me.

I usually kind of can't wait until my records leak. Back in the day, you could give people tapes, but you can't do that anymore, because it would be available to everyone on the planet within an hour.

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

There are stylists I really love. I'm a huge Joan Didion fan - if I wrote something that she might like, then I'd feel very proud. I want the action to move as quickly as it does in A Book of Common Prayer, where one thing bonks right into another very quickly.

In the present political situation, it's an interesting phenomenon to look at: what is the appeal of an autocratic leader? Why do people want somebody who yells at them? For most of us, that's so hard to understand. Who wants that? I think there are a lot of people for whom that fulfills some kind of need.