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.

I'm happy to feed the illusion that I'm a lazy recluse.

I see myself out of my own eyes, which means I have no idea what's going on the other way around. I just think I try to be a good person, and I fail.

The way Lou Reed wrote and sang about drugs and sex, about the people around him - it was so matter-of-fact.

For a long time I didn't want to do a solo thing, but there comes a point where everyone else is going outside of The Strokes and The Strokes filtering process.

It was 100,000 years before we figured out what to do with fire. Imagine cavemen, sitting in front of a fire, eating raw meat for 100 thousand years.

I have to say, I'm good with gifts. If I find something perfect for a certain person, I'll just get it and put it away in a kind of nook under my bed - a little gift hutch, if you prefer.