I just like cliches. I like tvtropes.com. It's pretty much my bible.

I was never totally sold on this idea that I'm just a musician. I wanted to be the Tim Burton of music.

It's stupid and embarrassing that you can describe something to one person and not to another. Until I've solved that problem I'm not going to feel like I've achieved too much.

I had it calcified inside me that that was the ultimate state of composing. Being Brian Wilson. Being simultaneously a genius and sort of lost at sea - not really knowing what you're doing but reaching for the stars.

We had a band called the Grainers. In our 12-year-old minds, this was like a double entendre for like being annoying and being a delicious donut. I got kicked out of the band for playing bass incorrectly. Like, I was playing it like a guitar. I was just so like twee and British, even as like the little 12-year-old boy.

I'm like soft Ray Manzarek. I think of the keyboard as almost like a bass or a lead.

I've made my most horrible inhuman tendencies work for me.

I need my 'art work' or 'entertainment work' or whatever to have empathy for or connection to the way I experience the world as a person.

I have a hard time making a linear-idea song, because that's not the way my thoughts work.

I'm down for indefinitely chilling as long as I'm not self-aware during it. That seems like it could be torture on some level but a lot of people pray for that so who knows.

I definitely strive towards something I think of as a hallucination of music. That's always been the OPN vibe. I think of it as mostly a felt thing, and a koan of feeling that is shared between me and OPN fans. We know what it is when it gets there.

To me, 'Garden of Delete' is a way of describing the idea that good things can bloom out of a negative situation. All the traumatic experiences I had during puberty, ugly memories and ugly thoughts in general can yield something good, like a record or whatever.

John Martin was a great, complex folk singer, and later on, his music became more and more melancholic as he went through a separation with his wife.

Science fiction to me is the ultimate art form, because it speculates on bodies and worlds that don't exist.

Film scores are complicated puzzles that you need to figure out and solve very quickly, or else you're basically fired. You're hired to enhance the film and you only have a couple tries to prove that you are capable of that task. I can keep trying to enhance my album ad infinitum.

I think I'm a person that's very pessimistic about, like I'm not a luddite but I don't think we need to crack the code of technology and bring forth a future techno utopia.

I'm predisposed to believe we live in a complicated, enmeshed reality. There's no authentic or organic.

I'm not much of a crier, actually. You know, I tend to cry and get sappy on planes.

I am not an egghead in the least.

I basically am always chasing this super enhanced stimulation from music.

You look at somebody like Thurston Moore. Is he a noise dude? A punky dude? Is he a free jazz dude? He's a stimulation chaser, and I relate to that.

Before puberty, it seems like I was more or less smiling a lot. I was really outgoing and wanted to have a happy life.

I was a failed grunge kid who was too nerdy to totally get down with rock.

I was perpetually this B-minus kid vacillating between eagerness and depression. I wasn't a bad kid, and I definitely wasn't aggressive, but I was a sad kid.

I knew my whole life that I had to make ends meet or I would be ashamed of myself. I had a lot of pressure from my parents. So that's where my vision comes from. It's not to be a great artist, it's always to be like, 'Dad, look, I didn't let you down.'

Music that is considered minimalism - or post-minimalism music in general - things of that nature or that come from that tradition, or even drone, or non-western music, have a more subtle and more open-ended verticality to them that allows for your own mind and body to be involved.

The way I think about things or hear things in my head is actually much closer to acoustic instruments. I don't have weird synthesized fantasy of music in my head.

Especially in repetitive music, to make a long piece of music you have to be extremely skilled in your sleight of hand. Just to make long form music it's very difficult and you really have to consider what you're putting someone through.

I loved Alva Noto's 'Xerrox, Vol. 3' a lot. It might be my favorite of his records. I must admit, I was bummed to see him say he was surprised by how emotional the record came out, as if he was ashamed. But there's something perfect about that.

I've lost so many gigs composing commercial or television music because I can't repress my inclination to work against conventions.

Nothing's ever easy about composing for other people's projects, but I like it. I've been lucky to have worked with adventurous directors who trust me.

Oneohtrix Point Never is total freedom to do what I think is right.

When people talk about how parameters can generate really good work, there's no better example than working within a genre in film. That's like the ultimate parameter.

As a movie fan, I remember Quentin Tarantino and Lawrence Bender and the sort of energy around 'Reservoir Dogs,' and the jump from 'Reservoir Dogs' to 'Pulp Fiction,' and how everybody was stoked on Quentin's career.

I love seeing Tim Hecker perform because the experience truly shakes me.

To me everything is a material, and everything is subject to change. When I work with found sounds, I'm trying to figure out how do I make this come from me?

Growing up, I wanted to write films and make films. Even as I took this detour and stayed in the music world, I still think in terms of 'What is in this room? What is the shot? Who are the characters? What is the conversation here?' My sense of pacing is very filmlike, it's not musical.

Yeah, I guess generally I don't want things ever to be easy. While there's some danger of doing something that loses your personal stamp on things, I'd rather take the chance of doing that and do something slightly uncomfortable or hard for myself.

I don't like straightforward drum sounds and hate snares; can't stand them.

If I'm not using something, I tend to sell it and move on, so I'm not too sentimental about hardware synths.

I love the idea that you develop a relationship over time that yields new projects and more creative freedom and trust.

I would love to perform in an Amangiri hotel somewhere. Just off to the side like a piano man, while people drink and eat.

Thrillers rely on certain archetypes and our familiarity with them is quietly driving all of the tension. So it becomes an interesting challenge from the score perspective, to enhance that tension without being noticed, just like those archetypes.

Anything that's too self-assured just makes me nervous.

I can't tell you how much more important watching 'Hellraiser' is to my music than listening to a Milton Babbitt piece or something.

Far Behind' is a single from Candlebox's self-titled record from 1993. The record came out on Madonna's Maverick imprint and went quadruple platinum, regardless of how much it sucked.

I really love Glasgow. It reminds me of Boston in parts.

I was doing the Klaus Schulze noise-kid thing before it became interesting to people.