Don't you dare get to the top and not know what to do.
You know some of the people in The Strokes, yeah, their parents had success - but we didn't live like yuppies.
Now, the good of business is put above anything else, as corporations have become the new ruling body. Most decisions seem to be made like ones of a medieval king: whatever makes profit while ignoring and repressing the truth about whatever suffering it may cause (like pop music, for that matter).
The only goal right now that I can have, the only thing I can offer right now, is the need to get good at music, do something with quality.
It's not like I wake up and songs flow out of me.
The way Lou Reed wrote and sang about drugs and sex, about the people around him - it was so matter-of-fact.
Songwriting is hard - it's so easy to fall into the same traps. It's not like I wake up and songs flow out of me.
I very often have night terrors. Just think of the worst possible situation, and it's a regular thing for me. I've died in my sleep twenty-three different ways.
I'd like to just get to a point where maybe we can say something that will be matterful. That's definitely not a word, by the way.
I think all of Manhattan has pretty much become a bar-slash-nightclub-slash-restaurant. There were always pockets of that. But now every corner of Manhattan is that.
In L.A., it's so sunny out all the time that even though I'm working all day I have this illusion that I'm on some kind of vacation. New York is so condensed and exciting but you stay there too long and all that turns into anxiety a little bit. It's nice to escape here and there.
I'm just going to try and be a good dad and not spoil the kid: give him love and encouragement but also discipline. Me and my woman, we don't want him to feel too entitled.
I always reference 'Mad Max' when I think about what I want to wear. But it's a fine line between that and 'Edward Scissorhands'.
My parents separated when I was eight. I grew up with my mom alone.
A band is a good way to break up a friendship.
It's that feeling when you hear your favourite song. That feeling, whether you're in a car, at a party or alone at home or in bed and you hear this song and it just hits you so strong - that’s what we aim for.
If the choice is between doing something supercool and having no one hear it and doing something equally cool and tricking people into putting it on the radio, I don't think the second option is some big sellout.
Birth is a beautiful thing.
Working on music is the funnest thing for me, and I love it, and I could do it all day, all night.
The Strokes can play anything. They could play 'Thriller,' and it would just sound like 'Thriller' as played by the Strokes.
There are so many little places I want to play, sometimes weird places I think would be fun to play... a bar that's half full.
In most cultures, you can have a kid at 18 and it's not a big thing. It's not like, 'Oh, you've got to get a different haircut and move to the suburbs and act, like, 35.'
A tour is the most intense, stimulating way to hear music; it's the best form to receive it. There's genuine excitement from people. I feel like we've stepped up a level.
The thing for me is I never had this burning desire to do a solo record my whole life.
It find it funny how people from Boston and New York hate each other because of pro teams.
