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.

Swans are majestic, beautiful looking creatures. With really ugly temperaments.

I like loud electric guitars because I like how you can just lose your entire being in the sound. But I can't find myself in a situation where our band Swans is doing typical chord progressions - it just seems cliché to me. Even changing chords sounds like a cliché sometimes, though it happens occasionally in our music. But you find ways to push yourself into the sound through repetition. It doesn't stay the same. It morphs constantly.

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'm pretty confident that people are going to come along for the ride. If they don't, tough.

Making those CDs, signing them, numbering them, packing them. It takes hundreds of hours, but it's worth it because I'm able to do the thing I love.

I'm more interested in pulling out strands of joy from both myself and the audience. I'm not saying the music or songs are "light," just that when they're performed with the correct commitment it's a source of real pleasure, for me anyway.