And frankly, when I made that record, hit songs were not what I was trying to achieve.

I actually think sadness and darkness can be very beautiful and healing.

Lately I've been a workaholic. I'm in the studio all the time and I've helped to produce a couple of artists

My second record was all about big ideas - I was trying to make big statements about the culture, about life. I think in a certain way, I was a 27 year old kid with a guitar

I try to make sure that the Buddhism is more or less implicit in the music rather than explicit

Things come to me pretty regularly. There is never a shortage or a backlog

But I can't really say there is too much modern music that I'm blown away by at this moment

I certainly wouldn't say that my life is a disaster, but there have been moments where I've felt like that

My first two records were more energetic; Phantom Moon is subtle, quiet; so these various reactions are just something I expected

But really important, perhaps most important is the craft; how you make your record, the creation of these sonic worlds you want your listener to hear.

So I started chanting when I was nineteen, which was about twelve years ago, and it really had a huge impact on my outlook, happiness, and general creativity.

Ours is the century of enforced travel of disappearances. The century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon.

I am a big proponent of character arcs that show us how people change over time.

No place is ever as bad as they tell you it's going to be.

Winning the election is a good-news, bad-news kind of thing. Okay, now you're the mayor. The bad news is, now you're the mayor.

Singing in Gaelic is very, very natural to do. I think lends itself very much so to being sung.

A wet dream in the mind of New York.

Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.

It's a wise thing to hold back.

Girls seemed to like artists! I felt very drawn to the idea of power, really, and doing painting as a power trip, in a sense. This idea of power has always driven me.

Fall was slipping quietly into winter