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

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

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

I've never felt at home anywhere.

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

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.

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.

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?

All I ever know is what I want to do next.

Most records are usually not united by one specific story, but that seems to be something that I like and that I find easy to do.

I'm not an unhappy person - I'm just an anxious person. It runs in the family.

Musical themes developing is a lot of what classical music is based on, and exposition and recapitulation - these kinds of things I find oppressive.

I basically just write stream of consciousness to a certain extent. I let the song kind of go where it wants to go.

I like mantras and repeating things, like in pop music, where you repeat a line over and over again. It's just so beautiful.

I did study with Anne Carson briefly in Michigan. She taught there, and that's where I first encountered her, in her class.

One thing that's really important to me in my music is mystery.

Green tea is my main source of caffeine, so I drink it every day.

I do have a big problem with the idea of music as a form of communication unless it's political - and that's where it's tricky because a lot of music is political, even if it's not overtly so. But my music isn't that; it's about a feeling.

I'm not, like, always focused; I'm very unfocused. I'm reading, and then I'm looking at my phone, and then I'm on the Internet.

It's so hard to know where you belong, ever. You have to be yourself and let yourself fall wherever you fall.

There's definitely been a focus on the literary aspects of my music, and I always get a little cringey because I don't feel like I'm particularly literary. There's a sort of academic label that's put on me that seems inaccurate.

I don't like to talk too much about my music; I like people to just experience it and not worry what I have to say.

No one recognises me on the street, ever.

I'm inspired by nonmusical things a lot, whether it's a film or a book or whatever.