I remember watching Looney Tunes cartoons and having the music stuck in my head.

People are born with the knack to write poems and songs. I'm not a poet at all.

I got a new 4-track cassette recorder a year or so after high school. For a while I would just stare at it thinking, how am I going to do this if I don't play guitar or keyboards? How am I going to write and record a song if I don't know how to play any instruments? I mean, I played the violin, but I didn't know anything about how to work a 4-track.

I love the Bach Prelude No. 2 in C Minor and had that stuck in my head: why don't I put this on Imaginaryland? So I brought it to my friend Tom Grimley who recorded That Dog's first record. I played him all my a cappella pieces, and he said, "P, you should really make a record, it would be great! You can record it at my studio and I'll put it out!"

People want to hear clean sounds; they don't want to hear coughing in the background, pages turning.

The Conversation was a movie I saw probably for the first time in the early 2000s. I immediately loved the piano and just how simple it is.

You have to be a poet to know how to write a song with lyrics.