I want to help people to not feel alone, like I feel and have felt for so long. Everybody's just trying their best. I guess I'm like an anti-star.

I never actually sexually attacked anybody. But I'm a writer, too, and I was always trying to figure out a way to recreate the experience of being this Albert Camus, Stranger-like solitary protagonist character without incriminating myself in any way, like, "Oh, what a perv!" I want to reach out to anybody out there who may have been riding on the train one time when things in their life were completely falling apart and saw a girl's legs in a skirt and it's the last bit of goodness that you can see.

I love Lana Del Rey! It's weird because I read something that said, "Oh, Willis Earl Beal and Lana Del Rey are the antithesis of each other." When in fact, she was what I wanted to sound like.

I was not in touch with reality. Growing up, I was being shielded without my knowing it, because even all the way up to the age of 15, I made these paper basketball men and played with them, like action figures.

It always fascinates me how you can get so much joy listening to another person, when me, personally, I can only listen to myself and my music these days. I've got some people in my iPod, but I only listen to myself. I'm folding into myself and I used to think that that was what you're supposed to do - you're supposed to reject everyone else and figure out who you are. You get little shards and points of reference, but that's how you confirm that only you know what is right for you. Everything else is pollution. What's starting to happen to me is sort of an identity crisis.

I think that live music is really pretentious - all of it. I hate festivals and live shows, because as soon as I get on stage, I start performing for people and it becomes about sex, banter, and skill. They're looking at me and not thinking about themselves. I'm thinking about how cool I look. It's just stupid - all live music is really stupid. I wouldn't encourage going to see anybody live, ever. Not even me.

I don't think talent has anything to do with inspiration. Inspiration creates talent. People prioritize innate talent too much. It gives them license to walk around and act like assholes. I think I straddle a line between being innately talented and having had to put in some work. You ever go to a party where there are a lot of creative people and they feel like they have license to just act any kind of way? I'm not really a moral person myself, but they just tend to never ever be sincere because they believe their art or the fact that they are artists makes them holy in some way.