“You think you’ve made something really great, but there’s a reason why it’s not resonating the way some previous work did. But it’s not that easy to just replicate.”

I wept heartily over this poor little deceased soul. It was the first sentient being I had ever killed. I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain. I was sixteen years old, a harmless boy, bookish and religious, and now I had blood on my hands. It’s a terrible burden to carry. All sentient life is sacred.

I think if everyone agrees that that’s the goal then it doesn’t matter who’s the band and it doesn’t matter who’s the producer. It just means that that you try to realise the ambition no matter what the situation is or who the people are.

I think that painting is a very ancient form of expression.

The first thing that inspires any song is a chord progression. When I have one I really like, I get into the lyrics even more.

We break the rules, but it’s mostly because we don’t know what the rules are. It’s easy for us to go to certain places, so I’m not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style.

I’ve been interested in that subject matter, like lots of people. Perhaps foolishly, I’ve allowed some of that stuff to creep into my music.

We sing some song that we made up but I don’t want to make a record like that.

When we’ve got something to say to the world, we will. I’m really happy that people are interested. “So, what’s up with the Pixies record? So, what’s up with the Pixies record?”

I listen to Neil Young and jazz and classical stations and, if my girlfriend’s driving, it tends to be Hall & Oates.

A lot of my heroes are artists and a lot of my musical heroes have an artistic side.

That’s the most important thing, to get along with people. When you feel like you click with them.

I have always been a singer, a writer, and a musician, not as a prodigy or as in a trade handed to me by my parents, but because of an inner voice or maybe a command from beyond reality as it is usually defined.

Bob Dylan is quite a songwriter, and a great singer and musician. I won’t bother with comparing myself to him, but I will say that I heard his records at a very young age and I still listen to all his records.

I don’t like to have everything all worked out in my head because there’s always a chance of it coming out different than you think it should anyway.

I think everybody has a painter inside of them somewhere.

I have had UFO experiences, and yet, at the same time, I can easily be convinced that none of it is true. It’s hard to say whether or not you’re a believer.

Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don’t think art is elite or mysterious. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics.

If you give yourself this gift of not knowing and you follow it, a vast spaciousness and mysterious openness dawns within you.

The press has always written that I am a recluse and a mysterious woman, but I am more down-to-earth than they think.

The universe lies before you on the floor, in the air, in the mysterious bodies of your dancers, in your mind.

I think our minds respond to things beyond this world. Take beauty: it’s a very mysterious thing, isn’t it?

Music works in mysterious ways. Once it goes in you have no idea what it can do to you.

Jesus is mysterious not just because of what we don’t know about him, but because of what we do know about him.

The urge to create a fictional narrative is a mysterious one, and when an idea comes, the writer’s sense of what a story wants to be is only vaguely visible through the penumbra of inspiration.