In the course of my life, I've made some happy songs but it's the more sort of like pathos-laden, emotional, melancholic music that either I make or that other people make that really resonates with me.

As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of making music is to get it heard by as many people as possible.

It's almost like a sign of mental illness to base your self-worth on the opinions of complete strangers, you know?

Could you look an animal in the eyes and say to it, 'My appetite is more important than your suffering'?

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.

When you're signed to a big label you're always in the position of convincing them, especially now because labels are barely keeping the lights on, so getting them to spend a little bit of money is really hard.

At the risk of sounding pedestrian, I'll be completely honest: the first thing I do in the morning is check Google News, partially because it seems sort of random and unbiased and partially because I tend to stay in hotels that don't necessarily have the fastest Internet connections.