I don't want to sound like everybody else.

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.

As far as playing playing festivals and everything, I feel like that's what I was born to do. I'm an entertainer, hopefully in the best sense.

Playing an old record doesn't interest me at all. It's exactly the opposite of what I want to do.

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.

The goal is ecstasy, but I don't want to make some sort of saccharine pop music. I want to make something that's completely uncompromising: the best possible music ever made.