I always worry that I'm a dilettante: I know something about lots of things but don't have exhaustive knowledge of much. Take dance music: I like enough of it and its history to be able to say a word or two about this or that record, but I'm nobody's authority. I couldn't name more than a couple of good drum'n'bass acts, and I have no idea what's big in the dance world right now.

The process of touring is always so weird to me. Once you've made the album, that's over, you move along.

I am at a place in my life where the more like a cave I can make my surroundings, the happier I am.

I have a hunger for justice, but art is a place I've always enjoyed being able to be free - to live in worlds that you don't have to be thinking about that all the time. I don't see myself writing Upton Sinclair books. My books are to entertain, although to me, entertainment is to make you feel sadness or to get in touch with your own pain - or fear, or to remember somebody who has gone missing from your life. That's my calling.

I was 14 or 15 when I discovered poetry, and I pretty much stopped writing prose until Master of Reality.

I don't celebrate milestones and I don't do anniversary editions. It's not my style to reflect on accomplishments.

I make up stories that take place in real space with real people. If I could convert this into a technique for experimental novels, I might really be onto something.