I think that I'm always going to think that it's silly to value certain things that no matter how many people find it really valuable, it's always just going to seem a little silly to me.

This is the way I want to die. Torn apart by angry fans who want me to play a different song.

I think it's ridiculous that we even have to talk about gay rights as rights...It's gonna be as shocking as the treatment of slaves someday.

I spent the '80s in the Soviet Union and when I came to America it was '89 and I was in an immigrant bubble and we didn't have MTV or cable, so I kind of discovered the '80s when I was already older, maybe in college. And I continued to have this romantic obsession with all those films and there's this sound I hear in my head and it's kind of this bittersweet romantic, dark sound.

It's a real gift to be able to have the works of brilliant, great people to learn from and build from. It gives you so much more to draw on, and then you don't have to be all about three-chord pop songs. I don't really like that kind of writing.

I'm really terrible at math, so I won't even attempt to do ratios and percentages, but all I know is that there's a lot of new songs that no-one has heard yet, and that there's a lot of old songs that some very, very super hardcore fans have heard for sure - there are people that have been coming and seeing me play in bars in like 2002, and there are songs that those people heard.

Maybe one day you’ll understand I don’t want nothing more than to sweetly hold your hand.