I find writing songs hard, because it does not come naturally to me. I never set out to be a songwriter or a singer.

I would like to think that the singer is the butterfly, and the drummer was just the little grub in the ground, working to become a caterpillar

Being big and famous doesn't get you more freedom, it gets you less.

I don't want to be a professional cripple. And I don't see the suicide stuff as tragic.

Those nations of artists, finding their own individualism, and kind of standing against the world: to me that's the ultimate nightmare. I want to get lost and diffused in the world.

The cultural mix that's happened in the United States is wonderful! Funny enough, one of the most wonderful things about it is that there is no American race.

In fact, when the fires of empire get hidden, they still stay burning underneath the moss, seething away. This is true with a lot of the countries with really difficult, impenetrable nationalist movements - countries that once had a big empire, like Turkey, England, or even in Italy, with the fascists in the middle of the last century. People who had empires, unfortunately, want them back eventually, somehow, someway.