New York is such a competitive place; it tears people apart. People come here and, if they can't make it in the first month, they get torn apart and they have to go back to where they came from. I don't think that's terribly healthy.

I read the New Testament, specifically the gospels and I was struck at their divinity, feeling that humans could not have figured this out on their own. We're just not bright enough.

I have nothing against bombastic music, but when it comes to making albums, I'd prefer to make music that has a sort of vulnerable subtlety to it.

I see 'Ahab's Wife' as offering an alternative vision to

Sit down, close your eyes, and think about dogs for ten minutes. On a very clear, physiological, and neurochemical level, your body is changed by these really positive thoughts.

Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp—all others but liars!

A lot of my friends who grew up in Manhattan have a strange phobia about Brooklyn. It's big and scary and they get lost.