I never really made much money playing music. It's because I've never really worked with a producer who could make my music sound, I guess, like how the public wants it to sound.

I hate the sound of my own voice. It's just up there, sort of naked and exposed. Live is hard, because on my records, I play almost everything on a lot of stuff. In a live situation, I can't control everything. I use two different microphones. One is just clean, traditional sound, and the other one is basically a cheap cassette-recorder microphone that goes through a distortion box to emulate my voice on the record. That helps some.

A lot of the stuff I listen to is glitchy electronic stuff and stuff with beats.

I'm f**king pathetic when it comes to being an entertainer. People come because they want to see me have a nervous breakdown.

I think maybe I'm trying to forget or not be so conscious about plastic circuitry and just go for the feeling.

Daniel Johnston is the purist and most unpretentious artist of our generation

A lot of that I base on, "Is it still going to sound interesting and fresh to me in five years, am I going to be embarrassed by this in five years?" It's easier for me to do stark, moody, pretty stuff, and I have all this pop stuff inside me, but it's a lot more dangerous, and pop is just apt to sound contrived and sort of pedestrian if you're not careful.