It's good that people come to the shows because there's nothing fashionable about Swans. Never has been, really. We've never been part of a scene. So the people that come are really there for the music. Fortunately, there's a lot of young people and a burgeoning female contingent, which is good as well.

I am definitely less and less interested in music made by people that exist today, people that are living. I just see them as part of the whole stupid process of the music business, desperate (even if they feign indifference) to get noticed, trying to "make it" in the stinking music business, to become "famous" etc, and it disgusts me.

I have my own record company. I have to answer to God, basically. I'm not young, so I want to make the best possible work I can before I exit.

I don't want to sound like everybody else.

It wouldn't interest me to try to sound like Cop or something. It would be silly and soul-crushing.

I never wrote poetry, just prose. I don't really consider songwriting a form of poetry either. The words are important, of course, but they're dependent on the music.

You make your work and you can't ask for approval when you're doing it. Otherwise, it's going to be untruthful in some way.