Better a loving single-parent family than a 'conventional' family where the parents hate each other and the father is a demagogue.

Since I stopped drinking my love life has taken a really serious hit. Romantic encounters that seemed like a really good idea at three o'clock in the morning on the Lower East Side? Less so in sobriety.

Honestly, the most vulnerable part of my life is probably just honest expression, as cliché as that might sound.

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.

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

I’ve never seen the need to choose one type of music at the exclusion of another. That would feel kind of sad and arbitrary.

What sounds good on the radio is really loud kick drums and loud snare drums, when everything's bombastic and in your face. It's the equivalent of a houseguest who screams all the time.