There's something about trying to know when you really need to protect yourself, or else you're not going to get anything done, and sometimes to be really uncomfortable or agitated or annoyed or bored. Boredom is so important.

I've done that kind of stuff in records, where you start going back and you want to just redo everything, destroy everything, because you think it all sucks and you can do it better.

I don't think about, "How does this song that has more of an electronic mix prefix to a song that has a full orchestra next to a song that has other things?" I just work on it as-needed.

I'm much more drawn to fiction, to short stories, and to plays, than I am to diarists.

I write a tiny fraction of what I used to write. My only job used to be to just write songs, and that was a really nice job to have, but only a tiny amount of people heard those songs, and I didn't make a living from it, and eventually I begged my parents to let me move back into my room.

The other day I was down by the Hudson River, and I see two nuns in full habit rollerblading down the street holding hands. And I'm like, 'Oh, my God, I get it. The world is surreal and beautiful. And everything is fine.'

Maybe I am skipping over the city and going from very personal things to the world, from internal experience to giant, far-away-from-space experience.