One of the central flaws in the state of contemporary music is that the major record companies have failed to incorporate that simple fact into their business plans. They've come into an industry that's based on idiosyncratic artists and tried to erase every idiosyncratic aspect out of it.

When I saw music as a means to an end - more fame, more money, dating celebrities - that's when things have gone terribly wrong. Now my life is focused on just trying to keep making music. Because when it's really good, it's just the most remarkable feeling on the planet.

The young have to kill the old. The young, if they want to achieve their own platform, have to diminish the reputations of the ones that have gone before. That's how life works.

I don't think too much about how it might exist in the world in a commercial sense - I more just try and focus on making music that I love and trying to put it out into the world.

I'd just rather have a really sharp, interesting, smart gay son than some big dumb hetero meathead.

The most emotional part is when I go into my studio every day and pretty much never have an idea of what's gonna happen.

Intellectually, human beings and animals may be different, but it's pretty obvious that animals have a rich emotional life and that they feel joy and pain. It's easy to forget the connection between a hamburger and the cow it came from. But I forced myself to acknowledge the fact that every time I ate a hamburger, a cow had ceased to breathe