Songwriting is reliant on inspiration, which ideally you don't have that much control over. Songs kind of half make themselves, and then you have to finish them.

While there are so many beautiful Baroque churches and it's a beautiful artistic tradition, it almost gets hideous and grotesque if you push it further. You can take something beautiful and overdo it.

I think of hip hop as a mass media, radio, MTV thing. It’s been extremely relevant over the last 10 years and rock music is just not anymore—-a tear rolls down my cheek as I say that.

I find myself a lot more open to bands if I just hear their song. It gives you an opportunity to engage with the thing itself and not be overwhelmed by everything else that surrounds it.

I think filmmakers all secretly wanna be musicians and all musicians secretly wanna be filmmakers.

There's the idea that you have to know how to solve the world's problems in order to feel that something is morally wrong. I'm always back and forth between optimism and depression about the situation.

I always find live shows on film kind of boring. Even my favorite ones, I kinda zone out for most of it. It's just so different seeing a band in the flesh and then watching a film of it, even if you have a hundred cameras and it's shot from every angle. There's just a communal, visceral thing that never translates very well.