I always thought my records were number one; it's just the charts didn't think so.

I want to write songs that are so sad, the kind of sad where you take someone's little finger and break it in three places.

I'm an Australian, and when I grew up much of my influences were American - blues music and country music, all that sort of thing.

The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.

At the end, we're kind of observers - creative people, I mean. I feel like an observer, and I'm pretty much able to step out of things and see how things are playing out.

In getting older, I find myself becoming progressively more ineffectual in a lot of different ways, and part of that is down to no longer having the youthful feeling that what you're doing has any true impact.

There are methods to creating a mayhem that sounds different from your usual mayhem. Because mayhem and a heavy drum backbeat end up sounding like Green Day or something. But if you put a different beat within it to create some air and lightness, the chaos comes through better.