If you and I become vegans, the global consequences aren't going to be that much. But if we can get a few hundred million people to become a little more aware and cut back on their animal consumption, the consequences will be great.

I just want to try - on a daily basis keep trying - to make music that I really love.

Many of my friends back in New York and elsewhere have a glib or dismissive attitude toward Los Angeles. It's a place of strip malls and traffic and not much else, in their opinion.

We hope that as a species we're capable of dealing with environmental catastrophe before it actually does collectively kill most of us.

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.

The truth is that genetics has robbed me of hair. But it's not interesting to blame genetics.

If you make a record, you should ask yourself, 'Did it make someone cry, in a good way, not a bad way?' There should almost be subjective emotional criteria for evaluating work, instead of just profitability.