Chuck Berry invented rock 'n' roll. He was one of the best songwriters of the 20th century.

We music fans go to shows for transcendence; it's like being called to prayer.

I don't think I'll ever be able to fully explain the way that the Velvet Underground's records opened a door in my head. But it has something to do with Lou Reed as a mythic figure: a person who fitted no category, who defied limits and trends and definitions.

I was a suburban kid who fancied myself somehow intellectual. I was into punk rock but I couldn't get into the subcultural signifiers of dyed hair, safety pins and torn denim. Being a punk seemed like a new set of rules that I wasn't interested in having to follow.

Lou Reed was an ideal figure to me. He was bisexual, like me, and seemed to inhabit an ambiguous middle place on the masculine-feminine spectrum.

I've always been drawn to ambiguity in pop music.

I'm not an actor.

Listening to songs is like eating and writing songs is like vomiting. You're putting a ton of stuff in, it combines in unpredictable ways, and comes back out in a big mess.

I honestly feel like I've been mostly toiling in obscurity until a little bit after 'Day Of the Dog' came out.

If you're trying to deal with being a marginalized person and trying to confront a larger population that isn't the same as you, you can be friendly about it, and invite everybody in, or you can be angry about it and be hostile and attack the systems that you want to destabilize.

I'm interested in God. I'm not interested in religion for religion's sake.

Being in a rock n' roll group, or being a musician, it is in conflict in some serious cultural ways with being an observant Jew, but in a conceptual way, for me, they go together real well.

My favourite artists are the ones who are human, and you know they're not in a failure-proof environment.

Judaism is a way of thinking, more than anything else, that I think is entirely distinct, and the more you know of it, the more you can enter into that kind of thinking.

I'm in this effort to unify my life and to live day to day in a disciplined way, to be real at all times, not just in front of people, or not just in a synagogue.

I'm going to make the music I wish someone else was making.

I always felt like I had a punk album waiting to be made.

We spent a lot of time making 'Transangelic Exodus' and toward the end of it, my ability and my love for music - that is, just garage music, direct and immediate - started to feel neglected.

I'm just grateful to people who are willing to admit how bad things feel for them.

The first music I loved on my own was punk.

I wrote 'My Teeth Hurt' in April 2018 when my teeth hurt and I didn't have dental insurance.

I think of myself as a tomgirl. A boy who's girly in every presentational aspect. And I play guitar and write good songs.

I was thinking very carefully about going into education, becoming a teacher, maybe becoming a rabbi.

Part of what you hear when somebody says something awful to you is like, 'They're right, I look ridiculous, why am I dressed this way, I should go home and change.' For me that voice is always in my head, right around the corner.

I wear what I want to wear and appear on stage as myself.

Desperate times make for desperate songs.

I'm a big fan of Louis CK - I think he's a master of standup.

I love it when people write rapturously about music they love.

I love obsessive fandom because I'm an obsessive fan who flips out over music.

A lot of bands break through with their third record: the White Stripes, the Clash, the Replacements.

Just being a normal person and having a social life involves a lot of dishonesty for me.

I think I'm gradually becoming a more politically aware person.

I like going to bed early and getting up early, but that doesn't happen on tour.

I was pretty much into punk rock and that's all I cared about. I was into Green Day and the Ramones. I wanted to get a guitar so I could play punk songs because this kid taught me power chords at summer camp.

I write all the time and I try to think of ideas all the time.

We need a lot more visibility of queer people in public life. People gotta get used to it.

I heard the Velvet Underground and that changed things when I was like, 15.

I could write a joke song really easily, but I think something that might be true for my generation is that there's a certain irony or detachedness expected of us, even though we really feel sincere. So the only way to sincerity is through a joke.

It's always about staying competitive with myself... Popularity is something that may happen from time to time, and I don't trust it and I don't think it means too much. I'm going for greatness.

Jews like to write and sing. In America, a lot of us have been eager to show that we're part of American culture. But it all goes back to King David writing Psalms.

I was rather obsessed with angels.

I don't really worship the album 'Transformer.' It's not the best thing that Lou Reed has done.

You have to make a character of yourself if you're going to be known to strangers.

I write good songs out of fear... fear of failure. Because if they're not good enough, you feel yourself starting to fall.

The Velvet Underground is probably the best band that's ever existed, assuredly the best American one.

I get stage fright really bad sometimes, so touring has been hard on me in a lot of ways. But despite that, I love performing.

I first got into music when I heard punk, and it was saying maybe it's OK if you don't live up to the expectations various authorities have for you.

God is close to the brokenhearted, and God lifts up the lonely. That was a message that was explicitly quoted to me and was part of my upbringing: Brokenhearted people and poor people and people who are in trouble should be your focus, and you should be on their team.

Not only am I a shy person, I take a little while to say what I mean, especially in a social situation, and usually those move too fast for me to say anything at all.

I always maintain that artists do not have any responsibility to do anything except cause no harm and do whatever we want to do as artists.