Britney [Spears]'s actually kind of like a broken-down shell of a human being, that's what makes her so endearing and compelling.

The good thing about working alone is I get a lot done and I can experiment more. The bad thing is I miss out on the gregarious, social way that most musicians work.

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.

When I was nine years old, I started playing guitar, and I took classical guitar lessons and studied music theory. And played jazz for a while. And then when I was around fourteen years old, I discovered punk rock. And so I then tried to unlearn everything I had learned in classical music and jazz so I could play in punk rock bands.

I've been having a midlife crisis since I was four years old.

There's an aesthetic theme, which is cities at two o'clock in the morning. Not cities packed with people going out to clubs and dancing but desolate, empty streets. It's off-putting but there's a strange comfort to it as well, that desolate urban environment.

I like the humility that comes from being hated. Hopefully some humility and compassion comes out of that.