I will be very sad when global warming and toxins kill off all the toads and frogs and salamanders. Here's hoping we, as humans, figure out a way to be less stupid.
I find the fact that so few people buy albums to be strangely emancipating. There's absolutely no reason for 99% of musicians making albums to think about actually selling albums. So as a musician you can just make an album for the love of making albums.
My records are fairly quiet and my dj sets are really loud. And then the live shows are like a robot soul revue. So i understand people's confusion.
I honestly haven't thought much about what to play and where, perhaps i should...it seems like most musicians are better at that than I am.
Success usually breeds a degree of hubris.
Sometimes I love the marriage of art and commerce; I love Donna Summer; I like the Rolling Stones.
I know it's simple, but my main inspiration is just my love of music. I know that sounds overly naive. But it's true.
All of us little bald white guys wearing glasses kind of look the same.
When I dj at big venues I try to play tracks that I would want to hear if I were e'd up in a field with 50,000 other people.
For me my biggest inspiration is trying to make music that effects me as much as the music made by my heroes.
I like singing, but it's certainly not my strong point.
I remember I went to Berlin right after the Wall came down. I first went to East Berlin, and all the buildings were old and falling down, and now when you go back to Berlin, you know you're in the East because all the buildings are brand new and very tall.
I've been an animal rights activist and a vegan for 28 years. The entire time, I've asked myself: How do I best advance an animal rights agenda?
If I had to label myself now, I'd call myself a Taoist-Christian-agnostic quantum mechanic.
I'm offended by the is-ought fallacy, which has been used to justify slavery, women not being allowed to vote, children working in factories.
The moment that you impose your will on another person or animal, that's when we are allowed to say you have committed an ethical breach.
I found it incredibly disheartening that in the late '90s, suddenly pop culture became even more misogynistic and more homophobic, and so I criticized Eminem for having lyrics that were egregiously homophobic and egregiously misogynistic.
Never have public feuds with anyone who's surrounded by people who carry guns.
If I'm walking down the street and someone stops me and says, "Oh! A song that you wrote meant a lot to me, and I listened to it after I went to my sister's funeral," that's when it hits me.
When I was very young, I played in a punk-rock band, but I also studied music theory and classical music.
I’ve never seen the need to choose one type of music at the exclusion of another. That would feel kind of sad and arbitrary.
I think it'd be great if Prince made an album of just romantic, slow ballads.
I went to Columbia University because they were doing a study on people who suffered from panic attacks, and because I suffered from panic attacks my whole life, I decided to be a part of it. They had this questionnaire where they asked, How many units of alcohol do you have in a month? The top answer was 40 or more, and I got really scared because I was having on average 60 or 70 drinks a week. And I realized that that was a bad sign.
I feel like someone who's meditating could possibly benefit their meditation practice and their well-being just by sitting down and thinking about things that they love for ten minutes.
I've experienced tons of failure. I've been making music for 30 years, and I'd say failure and success have happened in equal measure.
