I love America. I really do. It's by far the place I like visiting out of anywhere in the world. I get a palpable sense of excitement when the plane's landing. It's a cliché, but there's still an incredible energy about New York in particular.

Writing is a necessary thing for me, just to keep myself level. It has beneficial effects on my life.

I think there is a certain perversity in my music in that I continue, you know, to eat at the same ball of vomit year after year.

I'm unable to really write the kind of song that doesn't have a visual element, which most songs don't.

We cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all. Because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world, a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand, and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. If you could hold onto that flame, great things could construct around it, that are massive and powerful and world changing, all held up by the tiniest of ideas.

I've got some words of wisdom.

I think it's an essential fact for any performer or artist to fail as poignantly as they can succeed.