“I like my solitude, and I’m a strong-willed person; I’m a very hard-to-be-around person sometimes, I guess.”

Audiences tend to dig the earlier stuff by any given musician, and the artists themselves always tend to prefer the thing that they’re doing now.

I think the younger kids need to realize there’s this whole forgotten 90s that people don’t really talk about.

I’m not the guy in the dress with the blood and the unrequited gay whatever – which, according to my psychiatrist, my gayness is a form of narcissism but you’ll have to ask him about that.

I don’t have anything to prove.

You’re always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that’s maybe even too weird for your own taste.

Everybody just needs to realize that when you write something you’re just in one mood. I was told I needed to write it and it was overdue; I don’t even remember what day it was.

I was only in the public eye because I was annoying. You know how neurotic people may ask for one thing when they may really want another thing? It was like I was asking for attention, but I didn’t really want attention.

I’m glad to play for them. But I’d rather play for an audience where half of them were not into it than one where all of them were pretending to be into it, for fear of being uncultured.

I’ve always wanted to learn how to paint, too. I’d like to try everything, but music is my reason for living.

And then you realize that your friends – your real-life friends – it’s not that they become fanboys of you but they become more interested in what you’re doing than how you’re doing.

It’s just different today. Nobody seems to last too long these days. I wouldn’t know how to get started today.

I don’t have the capacity to write stuff consciously. When I do, it’s really awful.

Unlike the rest of everyone I hang around with, I don’t drink, so I remember what happened after shows. And I have never hit on anyone after a show, I’m not that kind of person. Even if I was attracted to someone, I’d be too shy.

Talk to Arto Lindsay and I’m sure he’s tired of people asking him about DNA; he’s probably really into what he’s doing now, which is good stuff.

There’s not like this separate caste system where it’s like, “I’m the musician, you’re the audience. Never the two shall meet.” It was a case where it was like, “Hey, you know what? I’m on your level, man.”

I played the theme from Twin Peaks on a little tiny Casio keyboard. People politely applauded. I just fell in love with that song and thought it was very heartbreaking.

One’s life, from being an exterior thing, grows inwards. Its intensity stays the same; and, d’you know, it’s most mysterious, the corners in which the joy of living can sometimes hide away.

Sometimes the best songs almost write themselves

A good journalist’s first priority should be to separate propaganda from fact – but sometimes its very hard to do that.

The music business is a weird business. Sometimes licensing doesn’t happen because some business component that you never knew about stops it.

Sometimes you work with somebody you’ve never heard of because you just feel like working.

No matter how useful we may be, sometimes it takes us a while to recognize our own value.

Being a comedian is an incredible thing, but it can be scary sometimes.

I’m not afraid to fail. Sometimes when you lose, you win. Sometimes when you win, you lose.