I wanted to lift the aspects of the lyrics and imagery that I found sincerely powerful and touching, plus the amazing musical extremities, and make my own thing. That's what making music has always been for me. Synthesizing a nonexistent kind of music that I wish existed because I wanted to listen to it.

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.

I like the idea of politically charged music a lot, but it usually seems to be preaching to the choir and ineffective.

I'm not ... pumped about being alive. But I don't think about suicide ever. I have a kid. I think that's just an automatic shut-off of that idea. In fact, I just instantly went into the necessities of parenting, and I think it's been very good for grief. Because it's a reality check, I guess. I have very real tasks that need immediate attention all the time.

To me, Twitter seems like a way for people to just let the world know about the most mundane bullshit that crosses their mind.

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.