When I was growing up, all I wanted to do was fit in, but if you're perpetually an outsider, it gives you a perspective that might have a little more objectivity than people who really feel connected to their social environment in which they grow up.

The demise of the monolithic record industry has been, for a lot of people, really liberating and emancipating.

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.

I've been making music for thirty-six years and, you know, I'm still just as in love with working on music now as I was thirty-six years ago.

Should the progressives in Germany in the 30s have tolerated the National Socialists? Of course they shouldn't have.

Shaving your head is acceptable. It's when you start wearing toupees and brushing your hair over that things go wrong.

When I was growing up, albums were my closest friends, as sad as that may sound - Joy Division's 'Closer,' or Echo and the Bunnymen's 'Heaven Up Here'... I had a more intimate relationship with those records than I did with most of the people in my life.