[Dennis] Etchison would write stories that were just punch lines at the end. You wouldn't realize something horrific was happening until the last paragraph.

If my songs are being listened to between any other songs, that is awesome, and I'm glad people are getting something out of them. We go to countries like Germany, where I can't imagine that all of my fans are engaging with the lyrics first and foremost. I think they're catching a vibe, a feeling. I consider myself a lyricist first and foremost, but if you get something else out of what I do, that's fine too. I'm not sitting back and telling people how they have to take my stuff. We just want to play music, and hope that people like it.

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.

You always feel like your 18-year-old self in some sense. And that's what walking through New York on a June evening feels like - you feel like it's Friday and you're 17 years old.

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.

I get nostalgic about having lived in Ames, Iowa, even though being a vegetarian in Iowa is not fun.

It's a cliché to state that one should think like a child, but it's clear that kids know something that the world tries to make you unlearn later in life.