When I was growing up I was an atheist, then an agnostic, and then I had a good eight or ten years of being quite a serious Christian.

'Arbitrary' and 'odd' are the words which best describe the pattern of my career. I'm perpetually baffled by the whole thing.

You can sit down with Reason or Ableton and literally in a couple of hours make a very good-sounding record. But then a lot of people become contented with that, rather than pushing themselves to making something that sounds great.

I just have to remind myself that my daily quotidie in life has almost nothing to do with any aspect of my professional life as a public figure. And I think a lot of people get to that point - specifically, sort of getting comfortable looking out for yourself and taking care of yourself and defining yourself based on healthier criteria, and not criteria that's established by complete strangers that you've never met.

I was never encouraged to believe anything. I was brought up in a profoundly agnostic or pantheistic community.

Everyone feels awkward, everyone feels uncomfortable, everyone gets older, everyone gets lonely, everyone gets sick, everyone eventually dies. You’re at the Aspen Ideas Fest, and you have these really smart, really accomplished people who pretend like they’ve somehow figured out a way to bypass the human condition. We live in this culture where there are so many things that want us to pretend that we’re not truly human.

When I was a drunk, New York was the greatest place in the world. You walk everywhere, everything is open until four in the morning, and people go to New York looking for debauchery.