I feel like I've given up a lot of my fantasies. I just want to do things differently, and to a lot of people that's annoying. I like weird stuff. I always hoped if we had a big success it would be on our own terms.

L.A. is a vortex. The weather there tricks you into thinking you're on vacation, even when you're working fourteen hours a day.

Songwriting is hard - it's so easy to fall into the same traps. It's not like I wake up and songs flow out of me.

I think all of Manhattan has pretty much become a bar-slash-nightclub-slash-restaurant. There were always pockets of that. But now every corner of Manhattan is that.

You know some of the people in The Strokes, yeah, their parents had success - but we didn't live like yuppies.

Doing heroin is like walking around with a terrorist as your friend. It's like taking a terrorist around to parties You never know when it's going to blow up on you.

Compared to people in Africa, I think we've all had privileged upbringings.