I've always been at war with the guitar. All vocalists are fighting a war with the electric rhythm guitar.

If you're Australian, you feel it in your bones because you're at odds with everybody else, except other Australians, in the sense that people always seem to be behaving strangely. People always seem to be behaving the wrong way, in a different way. You say things and there are silences.

I don't feel I'm thrown around by the winds of taste and fashion.

I get criticized for a lot of what I write about, but as far as I'm concerned I'm actually standing up and having a look at what goes on in the minds of men, and I have the authority to talk about it because I'm a man.

That's what I like about watching a movie: you enter an imagined world that's more interesting, more engaging than your own. Or less painful than your own.

When I start writing songs, and they come easily, I'm always very suspicious. That usually means they're reminding me of something I've already done before. When the songs become unsettling, and I feel anxious about what I'm doing, that usually means it's going to be more interesting later on when we actually record the stuff.

I don't really do Japanese interviews. I don't think there's much call for me in Japan.