“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.”

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

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.

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.

I think if the world were a fair and just place, there wouldn’t even need to be a gay label.

You need to know exactly where you stand in a business at all times. Measure everything, because everything that is measured and watched improves.

To really appreciate architecture, you may even need to commit a murder.

I know doing movies is where I need to be. That’s where my audience wants to see me.

Talk about science with everyone you meet. Especially talk about climate change. It needs to become a part of our everyday conversation (the way it is everywhere else in the world).

We cannot accomplish all that we need to do without working together.

We all need that extra friend outside of our immediate family to talk about that extra stuff you wouldn’t normally talk to your parents about.

I think we need to think of lots of ways to communicate. And we tried some at 350. We organised what they called the largest art project in the planet’s history. We do a lot with art and music and things.