“If you push hard enough you can change. You can take everything you know and round it up, turn it into something else, and keep turning things into something else.”

The feeling of being halfway through a show and just realizing that there’s nothing you can do to save it – it’s a horrible feeling.

Most of the bands that I really hold in my heart – you don’t think about them as bands; they’re just the soundtrack of your life.

I probably couldn’t have the same experience listening to that song because I’m self-conscious about some of my singing parts.

Regarding race or gender or sexuality, one of the great things about art and music is that they can provide people with very little else in common with a similar entry point for discussion, but the discussions still need to happen for life to get more interesting.

Hearing that [David] Bowie passed was like you don’t really believe it. It’s as if the sky shifted a little bit, to remind you it was there.

If anybody won life, David Bowie did, at least as a creative entity in the sense of writing yourself into existence and writing yourself out in such a graceful swoop.

Most of the bands that I really like no longer exist. That might just be because I’m in my thirties or whatever. But I also think it’s the rare band that doesn’t, like, turn into something else.

It’s insane when someone shows up to your show and is like, “You could run off with me right now!” I’m like, “It’s cool, I think I’m gonna go read.”

Adding instruments to parts of a song and having them somehow find a pocket. That to me was a huge lesson. Like, there’s more than 808s in the universe.

I feel like people just let each other live a little more in New York.

I have nothing against people getting their band back together, but the artists I love marked a time in my life, and to merge that time with now can be personally depressing.

You can physically move yourself around but there’s that great line that Adam wrote: “Does it define for life, like print of thumb?” I think it does.

When I’m in the mode of feeling positive about love, I don’t really feel the need to mark it down in song. In fact, I know what that song would sound like, and I would not subject anybody to that.

I don’t want my reasons to be informed by what people think about what I’m doing.

Oftentimes, when music is just blasting out it seems like it’s overcompensating for something missing in the song’s structure. When I think of the music that I listen to constantly, it’s never like an assault.

Adam is one of my favourite writers, period. He has such a unique voice and he’s somebody who I admire so much for putting the effort into inventing his own language and furthering it.

For every 1 fan I have 20 haters, once I can reach 1000 haters for 1 fan, I know I’ve made it.

Nobody likes, you know, the ugly parts of politics.

Somebody doesn’t know they’re not in Kansas anymore,’ said Stephanopoulos.

I know gymnastics. It’s always been a subjective appreciation.

They, who know no evil, will suspect none.

Filming is so much to do with rhythm, as is music, and if it isn’t there then you know in the end nobody can save it really, they can’t.

You want to know what I want? I’ll tell you what I want. I want back what Bobby Fischer took with him when he disappeared.

You know, I spend most of my life turning things down. There’s a lot of crap out there.