Being a best-selling author doesn't make you a millionaire. It's not like Stephen King.

I hate to sound blase about it, but literary status is not important to me. Being happy is important to me.

Some writers like to go around talking about what they do all the time. I don't.

Fiction makes your dreams come true, and, as a writer, fiction allows you to delve into the area of miracles.

A daily dose of Nietzsche goes a long way.

When the great jazz and blues clubs closed - joints where the cash register rang loudly and there wasn't ESPN on TV over the bandstand, and people smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey and hollered 'Play on!' - When those places closed, I was pretty much done.

I used to walk through the Old Times Square fearing for my life. Now I wouldn't be caught dead there.

I think heroes who are not flawed are not believable.

The whole notion of owning a person is so ludicrous, there's plenty of room to make fun.

I thank God I was a reporter before I became a writer.

I wasn't a guy built to write about entertainment.

When I was younger, I was ambitious. Now I'm not ambitious anymore. I just want to be happy. Does that make sense?

My goal is to be able to fill out one of those forms that asks 'Who are you?' and be able to just put 'Human being,' you know?

Essentially, I'm a storyteller, and I make my living by telling stories, be they music or nonfiction or fiction.

It would be nice if we redefined what we meant by 'war story.' If you're making $15,000 a year living in a certain area of Portland, trying to make it with three kids and no husband, that's a kind of war.

The James Brown story is not about James Brown. It's about who's getting paid, whose interest is involved, who can squeeze the estate and black history for more.

Historians will tell you that they deal with fact and empirical evidence. But that doesn't really help me understand a person.

When we're talking about slavery... we're really talking about the web of relationships that exists between whites and blacks from 1619 to 1865 to now.

A typewriter forces you to keep going, to march forward.

I'm not one of those deeper, ethereal writers. I'm just trying to get it done.

One of the big things that broke the band up for me, which I've become much clearer on over the years, was that I had no desire to be famous.

I have a very toxic combination of being completely determined, inflexible, controlling and being totally shy, guilty at hurting anyone's feelings, hypersensitive to other people's needs - and it's just paralysing.

In my experience, people looking for progress aren't actually looking to move things forward. They're looking to be perceived in a certain way: as a forward thinker. It's about vanity rather than any altruistic motives for the art.

The vast majority of kids in my school went on to college. That's just what you did. And I remember feeling like, 'No, I'm not doing that.' The idea that college was next, that it was a given, meant it was of no interest to me. So I didn't go.

I always wished I had a more flamboyant streak, but it's just not what I'm made of.

Punk rock, to me, was always outsiderness. When I first saw large-group-scene punk rock, I was repelled by it, because there were way too many people who agreed with each other.

I was always just blown away by David Bowie and how mannered the guy was willing to be. It was so far from what I imagined someone with my confidence to be capable of.

DJing is really, really pleasant. It's like having people over and making hors d'oeuvres.

Those early years in New Jersey were amazing. We lived in a really small town with tons of kids my age. There were fields and woods and a creek - it was a pretty ideal place to be a little kid.

We didn't set out to be cool. We set out to be an extremely tight band. We wanted to defy expectations. The more negative your mindset on coming to one of our gigs, the better for us, frankly.

I don't drink beer, and I don't drink at home.

I was someone who grew up obsessed with bands, how they were and how they treated one another, and how they treated fans.

Making 'Sound of Silver' was very emotional at times, where I just hated making that record.

With a computer, you have access to so many drum sounds and samples that your snare drum will be unrelated harmonically to your kick drum.

I think I'm designed to regret everything.

When given the opportunity to fail myself or fail someone else, I choose to fail myself.

I got a phone message from Janet Jackson saying, 'Hi, I love 'Losing My Edge', can you do me something funky and dirty like that?' I can't really do off-the-peg stuff, so I never called back.

I wouldn't say I'm a friend of David Byrne, but I guess I'm an acquaintance. I'm obviously an admirer, and we've met, but we don't call and chat about 'Breaking Bad' or anything.

The plan is to keep on putting out records until someone shows up and tells us to stop.

Songs are songs, and to reduce them is to waste them.

I spent a good amount of time with David Bowie, and I was talking about getting the band back together. He said, 'Does it make you uncomfortable?' I said 'Yeah,', and he said, 'Good. It should. You should be uncomfortable.'

I don't prepare very well. I'm always sort of wrapped up in what I'm supposed to be doing in the moment, and then I suddenly appear someplace, and I'm really not prepared.

I'm really focused and obsessed with writing things that are specific. I don't like big rock lyrics - I find them infuriating.

My personality is based on an anonymity and failure. Failure and anonymity, those are my strengths - superiority from below.

When I want to DJ what I think to be the best-sounding place in the world, I go to this place in Sapporo, Japan, called Precious Hall, which has kind of a custom sound system with a much lower ceiling and a smaller room.

I moved to New York in 1989 and went to study at NYU.

I'm an underdog by nature, and I like to be fighting. I don't make music for myself. I make music to fight.

I was a singing guitar player as a kid, and I found it really embarrassing, so I stopped singing and became a drummer.

Even in the band I was in when I was a kid, I'd be telling everyone what to do. I'd be leaning over the drums, telling them to tune their guitars, micromanaging.

As things mature - whether they be real estate, rock n' roll, politics, festivals, radio - there's an efficiency that develops, and with it, very often, comes some soul-crushing truths.