People do get mad at me for falling asleep sometimes, and it's the most frustrating thing. I can't help it. What am I gonna do?

Love is intense, and sadness is intense.

I'll know when a song's really awesome, for sure, and I get super stoked, and I'm so high when I'm hearing it back, but then you sit with the record forever. You're mixing it, and you can really just over-think everything.

If somebody else wanted to do a song for McDonald's, that's up to them. I wouldn't do something like that, but whatever.

Humor is important. Nothing against bands that are always a downer, but the reality is - it just becomes theater.

'Street Legal' is like a cult classic. It's pretty cheesy at times, but you learn to embrace it.

Even when I played in little league as a kid, I liked making friends, but I didn't want to be there, really.

The real reason I was lo-fi before was really just because that's what I could afford.

I had a wacky job driving a forklift for an air freight company. That was the worst.

I've developed this routine at home. I wait for the kids to go to bed; then my wife falls asleep. Then, it's dark and quiet enough for me to work on songs.

Life is mortal. There are all these rewards and consequences. Sometimes you embrace them, and sometimes they knock you over.

My cousin used to make fun of me for liking stuff like C+C Music Factory. I didn't have any tapes; I just liked their song on the radio. We liked that because that was what we had access to.

I actually often write about writing music and being in that zone.

I'm the kind of person who will set time aside to do something and then do everything but that thing.

I write a lot when I'm feeling bummed, but other times, you get locked in, and it's totally personal. If you're really low and writing, you're not thinking about anybody at all.

I'd say the best thing the Violators and I have done is to dominate the U.S. with an arsenal of smash hits.

We'll play somewhere like London, playing to 2,000 people easy, and every time you play with more people, you think, 'You're a rock star,' and it makes you laugh. I guess I am, but I'm also, you know, not.

Australia is a wild place.

I'm obsessive when I get an idea in my head.

When I leave a recording session, there is usually a lot of paranoia or superstition on my part, like I'm afraid to hear what we've done.

I like to laugh at dark things.

I do a lot of things, and I'll get excited about them - maybe it'll be a song in a movie - and then it comes out, and you're like, 'Aww, that was cool, but it wasn't quite as big a deal as I thought it would be.'

My family was always playing music; I always enjoyed it. My cousin, who is a little older than me, he started playing music, so I wanted to, also. I asked my dad for a guitar, and he got me a banjo, so that was my introduction to playing. I played it like a guitar. I had a few lessons, learned out a few chords, and figured it out right away.

I'm definitely influenced by Animal Collective. I watched them early on.

I've gotten a lot more paranoid in my older age.

I'm just used to the L.A. music life.

Nobody wants a complainer.

I find that I get nervous before I play. Even sound checks can give me anxiety and screw with my mind. But as long as I can play a little acoustic guitar backstage if I'm feeling nervous, so I don't have to walk in there cold turkey, I'll be fine.

I feel like if you sit down and have an assistant engineer and a producer in a top-notch studio and everyone sets up all the mikes perfect, all of a sudden it's really hard to live that melancholy song. It's hard to really live it in the moment.

I want really badly to just be funny in a movie but be close to myself.

There comes a time when you've toured a ton, and a time to be inspired again. Listen to awesome jazz records that are mellow with no words, and just sit there and read a book, or space out on your couch. And eventually, all that inspiration comes.

If I had known I'd be on Matador back then in my childhood, it would have blown my mind.

When I write, I tend to tap into this human wondering vibe that could come off negative, but it's really not.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.

Human beings will be happier - not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That's my utopia.

If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy.

Science is magic that works.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.