It's hard for me to get shows in the U.S. It's that simple. I don't know what that means. I think it means there's not as much support here for my music?

I usually like to hide my vocals behind the music. I don't like to hide them consciously, but I have a tendency to prefer the vocal at the same level as everything else and put lots of reverb on it.

In high school, I would secretly play Joni Mitchell songs all the time. That's when I started singing and playing at the same time, and I got really into doing that.

If I feel like I'm myself, then I'm very uncomfortable.

I've never felt at home anywhere.

In L.A., you can play forever, and no one around the world will hear you.

I started writing music as a composer in school, in the classical tradition.

To me, the process of art is very much a process of translation, of borrowing.

I take music very seriously, but it's important to me that my music is - I don't know if 'intuitive' is the word, but there's a really important element of something kind of mysterious. It's not academic or esoteric.

I really love working with Ramona from Nite Jewel. We've kind of grown up together.

If you've ever seen paparazzi go after a celebrity, it's really freaky.

There's a lot psychologically going on in boxing... I think I relate to some of it. I have a respect for it. It's like performing, but it's also this crazy, self-destructive thing.

I was in school for four years writing music to please my teachers. That was not music I liked. And when I make music that isn't for something I want to make, and it's to please other people, it's - the outcome is really bad.

I do develop characters for songs, and I think of everything as storytelling, in a way. But I don't plan out what they're going to sound like. I just sing over what I've done.

I listen to the timbre of the music, and I fit my voice to blend with that timbre.

When you make music on your own for so long, you get used to just doing whatever you want.

I like talking about my music.

I don't ever like to see paparazzi much, but I have seen them, and I guess anyone who's seen them knows how scary they are.

I really like being home. I like being comfortable, and I'm not a very dramatic person.

I thought I was gonna get a doctorate in composition or be a composer and be at a university for the rest of my life, mostly because my parents are academics, and that was the logical thing to do.

I don't often meet with strangers and feel okay about collaborating with them.

'Betsy' is one of my favorites because it is the one to which I've imposed the least clear narrative. To me, it's so much more about the feeling - desperation - than any kind of story at all. There's very little imagery or character development; it's just about a deep and desperate search for something.

The meaning of the words in my songs are very important to me. But what's most important to me is that the music works.

I try to not think too much about how people are receiving my music. And I'm not really famous enough that it's a problem.

I don't think I'll ever become a pop star.

I don't know how well I work in traditions. I don't know if it's just the way I listened to music growing up and never having my foot in one particular world, and just wanting to do my own thing.

I say most of my music is very trial-and-error.

I don't consider myself supremely talented, but I really like to try things and sift through it and see what mess I made.

I don't think all music that is considered 'avant-garde' is bad, but it's definitely elitist. I hope my music is not that.

The Beatles, even Radiohead, all of my favorite stuff I'd play on the piano. But it was all very secret - for me, for fun. I wasn't going to record myself playing those songs, and it never occurred to me to write a song of my own.

I really write at home on my own, and the demos themselves are very similar to the final recordings in a lots of ways.

Saying that something is accessible gives it this implication that people need something, and thinking that we know what people need or want is really unpleasant. I don't like to think that way, like, predicting what it is that the people want.

I don't write thinking directly about what I'm feeling, usually. I just let myself write whatever comes out without it necessarily being directly a translation of what I'm aware that I'm feeling, you know?

I don't fit into a group very well socially. And that might be reflected in my music.

A lot of my personal life feels very separate from my music.

When I'm depressed is when I'm not interested in writing anything, whereas some people, I think, are spurred to creativity through their personal experiences and through depression. And for me, it's a very low place, and it's not fruitful.

For me, the poetic decisions tend to be calculated, and the musical decisions inspired by the poetic decisions are free.

I like working with students a lot and watching some of the amazing stuff they put together.

One thing I've learned is I really want to work with people.

Accepting that the world is full of uncertainty and ambiguity does not and should not stop people from being pretty sure about a lot of things.

Life is full of what-ifs, many of which could easily have been realities, had just a few things been different.

The mark of a mature, psychologically healthy mind is indeed the ability to live with uncertainty and ambiguity, but only as much as there really is. Uncertainty is no virtue when the facts are clear, and ambiguity is mere obfuscation when more precise terms are applicable.

It's not leftovers that are wasteful, but those who either don't know what to do with them or can't be bothered.

Love is indeed, at root, the product of the firings of neurons and release of hormones.

People should not expect the state to protect them from fraudsters. If we do, we get into the habit of neglecting our own powers of intellectual discernment.

Daily life is better when it involves interactions with real people who have a personal investment in their labour, like shopkeepers, than it is with someone 'just doing my job' or the infernal self-checkout machine.

It is true that legality is not morality, and sticking to the law is necessary for good citizenship, but it is not sufficient.

From time to time, it is worth wandering around the fuzzy border regions of what you do, if only to remind yourself that no human activity is an island.

Cooking can be rewarding when it is a choice and no longer the onerous duty of the housewife, and when a dishwasher can lighten the load at the other end of the process.

There are many things you shouldn't measure. Don't, for example, try to measure how much you love your wife!