North Carolina was on the vanguard of being for [ trans rights ], and that's why we're seeing this push back. The conservatives noticed that there had been a lot of progress and they tried to tamp it down.

If you're standing in the middle of a ring and you're playing the villain, and everyone is booing and throwing things at you, that's real.

As an artist, you always have to be growing. You don't just want to do what you already know people like.

I don't like to say, "Oh, I don't like this kind of music." I like to listen to it and try to see what people who like it get out of it.

I start writing, pull whatever images happen to occur to me and make up a story, instead of starting with details that are real and I know of and going from there.

People always talk about good time rock and roll, Chuck Berry or whatever, like this liberating force for feeling good. But what I need in my life is to be liberated into feeling bad. Not sad. I have plenty of sad. What I need is a place where I can spray anger in sparks like a gnarled piece of electrical cable. Just be mad at stuff and soak in the helplessness.

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