Guitars have been the obsession of my life. I first picked one up at the age of four and Ive been a guitar junkie ever since.

If people can finally recognize you on radio without being told who it is, thats what you aim for.

I had a feeling about what I wanted to say, and I wasn't really qualified to discuss real things out of America because I didn't grow up there.

I seem to attract and be attracted to very willful, fascinating people.

I'm not interested in trying to have people who might like other kinds of music follow me. I don't want to please them.

Growing up in public is a test, and not many people know how to do it.

Coming from a working-class background, where my father did manual labor, was a good grounding; I was obsessed with getting a job or getting out of the house at 15.

Joining Modest Mouse was just consistent with what I used to do as a teenager: I followed where I thought I would make some interesting music.

I never took fans for granted. I always assumed subconsciously that people who followed what I did were just people who were kind of like me.

The biggest musical influence on me was my mum. We were both enraptured by music.

Now chart music is a genre all of its own and it's slipped away from what I understand pop music as. It's pretty difficult to take; it clogs up the airwaves.

To speak your Heart outnothing can be better than Night and Acoustic guitar !!

Raw ingredients trump recipes every time

We're all working together that's the secret.

In the exhibition at Galerie Perrotin, they have the Sarajevo painting - I think it's very good to nail down this story of Pol Pot and other people, not all dictators but most of them.

Anything worth having has its price.

All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising.

If you sing of beauty though alone in the heart of the desert you will have an audience.

Blame is safer than praise

Don't stop to paint the material, but push on to give the spirit.

I may not say it all the time or I may not pray as much as I need to, but I am not forgetting where I came from and how I got to be where I am today.