If you do believe in science, you really have to actually stand up and make a stand for it. You can't just say, the facts aren't in. Science is always looking for better explanations to everything, but that doesn't mean that when we get on a plane we don't know what's supposed to happen next. And if it doesn't go the way that it's planned, that's a big, big problem. The culture wars are very tricky and make me a little sad.

Sometimes you have to wonder if there isn't an ejector seat built into having a popular-music career. We were lucky when we started. We were already old when we started - you could have described our first album as "aging Brooklyn guys." We were in our late 20s. We weren't octogenarians, but a lot of bands were already younger than us. Fortunately, we've held on to our manly good looks.

People love fact-based songs, which is a very funny idea.

I wrote a thirty-second song that I couldn't finish for a year.

In Germany there's something about rock music much more political than it really is - like everything you were doing was an indictment of the American culture. I read an interview with one of the members of Sebadoh. He was saying he had just got back from touring Germany for the first time in five years or whatever, and one of the interviewers asked him, "Why aren't you still relevant?"

Look, up in the sky! It's the sky!

I think the biggest wrestling match-up I have is how to respond to the word "quirky." Or the alternate, "nerdy." Both are essentially benign to the reader, but if you're a writer just sort of involved in your creative process, they seem like very small motivations.