The average life expectancy of a celebrity is 20 years less than someone working in a coal mine.

I love that vinyl is actually growing in popularity, and that there are so many great record stores.

I wasn't raised Catholic; I just really like the image of a neutral and benign Mary floating around somewhere, being nice to people.

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

I joined Facebook purely so I could play online Scrabble. You have eight tiles instead of seven, so you tend to have higher scores. I'm somewhere between 400 and 500.

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.

When I was growing up, I fetishised New York City. It was the land of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, it was where Leonard Cohen wrote 'Chelsea Hotel', it was CBGBs and all the punk rock clubs. Artists and musicians lived there, and it was cheap and dangerous.