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 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

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.

It's inevitable your environment will influence what you do

A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense and is thereby a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety.

Hope is a positive-affirmation.

He was as yet not sufficiently experienced in ruffianism to know that one villain always sacrifices another to advance his own project

Thought is barred in this City of Dreadful Joy and conversation is unknown.

Found my foundation it was underneath me all along. On this path I'm on I never walk alone

Politics has always been the art of the possible. Today it's too often the art of the probable - tinkering around the edges without any greater vision, without a sense of optimism and imagination.

Since the end of the Cold War, hegemonism has become increasingly unpopular.

I saw no cause for their unhappiness, but I was deeply affected by it. If such lovely creatures were miserable, it was less strange that I, an imperfect and solitary being, should be wretched.

If something is repeated over and over as obvious, the chances are that it is obviously false.

Where two factions see vividly each its own aspect, and contrive their own explanations of what they see, it is almost impossible for them to credit each other with honesty.