People think our music's very aggressive or angry or whatever, and it's just the opposite, really... I like laughing. And I like being really calm before a show, and smiley.

I've always tried to listen to a lot of different music from around the world.

I think music is an intuitive force. It's this beautiful wave that connects all of us and inspires us, and I think music has the ability - when you listen to a song, you're not immediately thinking about the lyrics or what's going on in the mind of the writer, you're feeling the song.

I like African music, and I'm a huge Ravi Shankar fan.

With 'Elect the Dead,' I learned how to make a rock record without a rock band and make the rock record I've always wanted to make.

I think that the memory of Armenia's genocide opened my eyes at an early age to the existence of political cynicism.

A lot of pop music is based on trying to make people remember it so that they'll buy it. To me, it was not about that.