I learned in the last few years that it's really unhappy and really unsustainable to try and base your well being on something as arbitrary as record sale and critical acclaim and the interests of the public. All of those things are so fickle. So my approach now to music is I want to make records that I love, and I hope that other people love them, then that's OK.

If you look at the history of demagoguery and fascism, it always happens when there are two things. It requires a gentle populace to allow it to happen, whether through laziness, ignorance or ineptitude, but it also requires a very angry, dissatisfied section of the populace who want egregiously simple answers to very complicated problems.

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

When I was growing up, I was the most pretentious person I have ever met. I only read obscure books and watched obscure movies and only listened to obscure music.

An artist in 2014 who is thinking about album sales is either sadly deluded or has to make so many commercial compromises that it sort of takes the joy out of making music.

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.

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.