You have total freedom. It's like, if you do a solo record, there are no restrictions and you can do whatever you want, good or bad. You can have these passing fancies where you go in to the studio one day and you want to do something like what you did on the way in. That's dangerous. You have to have some sort of focus.

Theres no amount of money that makes you feel better when people think of you as a joke or a hack or a failure or ugly or stupid or morally empty.

For some people, home is family and their mom's house or their girl or whatever, and I have those experiences as well, but the biggest thing for me is Chicago. I don't know how to explain it.

I always thought 'Stump' was kind of like, you dropped something on your foot. It's not the most exotic rock-star name.

Everyone wants to pretend like they sprang out of the ground with an Animal Collective record in their hands and a David Bowie haircut, and that's just not the case. You discover these things gradually.

'Punk' doesn't mean Mohawks and safety pins. It's about not conforming.

I don't mind critics. I mean, I wrote for Rolling Stone for a hot minute. I like criticism. I enjoy criticism. The thing I don't like is cruelty for cruelty's sake. You don't have to be a jerk to say something negative. You can say something in the negative sense and have class.