The music takes you. It has to be alive. It's like you hammer something, and the way it happens to bleed leads you into new directions.

I'm always trying to push myself into unfamiliar places with the music, sometimes without success, I have to admit. But I'd rather be there than relying on a style that people recognize and want to follow.

Many of the songs were written as a way of paying tribute to specific people, but in the end the songs took on a life of their own and I didn't worry about accuracy or biographical truth, so it's not a problem.

I like loud electric guitars because I like how you can just lose your entire being in the sound.

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

At a certain age, children are total Id - they're anything but beautiful little flowers. That always interests me. The place where the ego and the superego start, and where guilt and socialization and morality takes place, the true root of it.

The sexuality of children - there's a lot friction there. That tension interests me a lot.