Being in a rock band, I feel a certain responsibility to have a weird haircut. I mean, who else gets to do that?

The Flaming Lips have been on Warner Bros. forever, and certainly everything I heard growing up was on a major label in some way, from the Cure to Radiohead to Bjork.

What I miss [about church] is being forced to be in community with people that aren't the same as me.

If I was a cabinetmaker or a commercial fisherman, it would be the same question - how to connect to my world. The job we do affords us the opportunity to have people listen to what we say. But a lot of people have a similar situation: They're trying to find a way to do some good.

I don't think the emotional quality is the defining quality of the music but it's definitely something that people have picked up on a lot

The film Black Orpheus is one of my favorite films of all time, which is set in Carnival in Brazil.

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.