I've always written songs with a visual counterpart in my mind that no one else can see.

Profound thoughts and profound experiences get revealed to be tricks that we play on ourselves, and poetry gets revealed to be just, like, some dumb words that somebody put in an interesting order.

When someone close to you dies, the line is shifted really drastically about what is meaningful and what isn't.

For some reason focusing on destruction and mortality is more poetically exciting to me than hope and love.

I probably wouldn't kill a spider now, I'd probably try to scoop it up in a cup and put it outside, but not for any reason other than I don't need to take other lives recklessly. But other than that, I don't believe in ... anything. Anything, anything.

I think that I probably inevitably fetishize nature, although I try not to, because it's kind of embarrassing, repulsive behavior. I think it's just an extension of me being old-fashioned.

When I read War and Peace in Norway, really far away from humanity for a long time, it was such an amazing, affirming blast of "humanity" in all forms. It totally cracked my mind-nut open and rainbows shot out. I loved humanity and being alive, rather than wanting to bury my head in the snow.