I got the chess bug when I was finishing high school, we were doing chess tournaments at my house. I never got to a very high level.

If time is my vessel, then learning to love might be my way back to sea

Everyone is broken-hearted except for the drastically unimaginative

In an artistic and spiritual sense I'm really not that concerned about what happens after the album is done.

You can't just imitate and keep coming up with ideas. You have to be tapping into something that's pure and unconscious in yourself or you'll have no career.

Sometimes you learn about the personality of your favorite artist, and you like their art a little less, because it doesn't jibe with what you had envisioned.

That's for non-musicians to say: "I only listen to this or that type of music." I think musicians love all music, or at least that's my case.

I perceive everything to be constantly subjective and strange. My version of truth in what I express, it feels like that opaque quality that you're talking about. It's just me being legitimate.

The idea of starting a band because of Nirvana and thereby trying to sound like Nirvana is totally not the case.

Jeffrey Lewis sings as though absurdity were truth, and truth absurdity. And I think I agree with him.

I never wanted to start a band to sound like Nirvana.

I am flagrantly nuts. I can say this because I am a doctor and I know about these things.

& besides, I don’tdesign my smiles to be nets because I’m not fishing

Marriage isn't a carnival ride.

In any nation in which people's rights have been subordinated to the rights of the few, in any totalitarian nation, the first institution to be dismantled is the jury. I was, I am, afraid.

Many a woman will pass for elegant in a ballroom, or even at a court drawing room, whose want of true breeding would become evident in a chosen company.

Only become a musician if there is absolutely no other way you can make a living.

What do you call those knobby things on doors that help you open them?

When you love something it's not a job anymore.

There are ways to stimulate being prolific, and part of that is making pilgrimages, and being open to listening, changing up the routine.

I don't think fear necessarily is a core human emotion, but I do think fear of death is something that is at the core of every person's existence.