I see it as my duty in some way is to be out in the world as an Australian putting forward what I consider to be authentic Australian music.
I don't really do Japanese interviews. I don't think there's much call for me in Japan.
God is in everything whether I'm mentioning him or not.
Some people, myself in particular, have an adversarial relationship with the camera, and it sprouts up in every photograph.
Songs need to have the ability to change and to grow for sure. They take on lives of their own. Some songs just don't have that capacity. They're locked within a period of time. And as soon as you take them out of that period of time, they die very quickly.
That's what we [outsiders] feel America is really about - the kind of crazed ravings of the Christian right - when it's probably something quite different.
The reason I've gotten into script-writing, which was accidental to begin with, was that I found it was a far more effective medium for violence. Which is something that I'd always written in songs, but the violence always sat strangely within a song. And I was always interested in the way in which you listen to murder ballads and things like that - these weird lines would kind of come out, like, I drug her by the hair or something - that sat weirdly in the song. Film seems to be a medium designed for betrayal and violence.
Outside the world of politics, one person in the world of the arts I would mention as an influence is Nick Cave, another person who has been around since the late 1970s. He has developed and changed remarkably, whilst remaining true to his vision. He has been a great help to me as well, without his knowing it.
You're collaborating with people you don't even know, when you're making a film. You're collaborating with people you've never seen. So, the collaborative process is very, very different than when you're collaborating on a record with the musicians you've worked with all your life.
I don't have any authority to talk about the domestic policies of America. But as an outsider, I am mystified by the fact that you are encouraged to buy a gun, but if you use it for the purpose that it is expressly designed for, you get the death penalty. That aspect of America is kind of mystifying.
I'm always sort of looking for projects that I can sort of put out into the world, into the public sphere, and to somehow cause an effect. I want to be able to create projects that sort of are going to make people think and think in this sort of magical, sort of fantastical way.
The body becomes the carrier for the work. It's not really about the physical body; it really becomes the apparatus that carries and moves the work. I don't really consider the body as much; I look at it as a tool.
To my undying shame, I do read reviews. I don't read them all, but I like to get some kind of idea how things are going.
Writing is a necessary thing for me, just to keep myself level. It has beneficial effects on my life.
The concept of God in America is very different than it is in England. Because we see the horrendous outcome of religion as being an American thing, in which the name of God has been hijacked by a gang of psychopaths and bullies and homophobes, and the name of God has been used for their own twisted agendas.
What you're really after when you see a film or listen to a song is a singular vision, and I'm not sure how much of that you really get in Hollywood.
Guns are part of the American psyche, aren't they? This is collateral damage for having a Wild West mentality. It's intrinsic to the American psyche. It's never going to change.
The problem with books, now that I've written one, is that the idea of adaptation is so much easier than sitting down to write something new.
Writing screenplays makes me a better musician because it clears my head. After writing a movie, I go running back to music as fast as I can.
Anything that I'm doing I'm writing specifically for a particular project.
Jesus Christ was the biggest blight on the human race, he was. And all them socialists and communists - second rate Christianity.
