Berlin is just an affordable European city that's supposed to be cool. There's nothing too deep about it.

We're probably a couple of freaks who've created their own little universe, are living in our own little world and that's the only place where we can survive.

Lou Reed is something like a personal favorite of mine, but you could always put me into that drawer of singers who can't really sing, who speak their songs.

If a voice is just too nice, without an edge, it kinda all flows by. You forget it. You don't listen to the lyrics.

A good voice isn't so important. It's more important to sound really unique.

I'm not sure if you can blame everything on the American way of life, but the United States are big. So, if you have a lot of people there, the percentage of stupid people is bound to be higher.

I think most musicians know if they make the same record twice, even if they say they don't.

Despite my own doubts of being marketable or crushworthy, my goal was to write a record of peppy pop songs, hopefully without annoying anybody.

We're not on a desperate mission to write chart compatible stuff.

I didn't really like confessional poetry or things. They seemed sort of dated to me, or just corny.

The lyrics are different from Nick Cave songs and lyrics. His songs are very narrative.

Well I'll be waiting for a long, long time in the line which is your arms.

It has been wisely observed by the greatest of modern thinkers that mankind has progressed more rapidly in every other respect than in morality.

I grew up in a very masculine environment. So I was around a lot of men, my brothers and their friends. There was just a lot of guys around.

Dictators can always consolidate their tyranny by an appeal to patriotism.

I am weaker and more sinful than I ever before believed, but through Jesus Christ I'm more loved and accepted than I ever dared hope.

What do you call 500 lawyers lying on the bottom of the Ocean? A good start.

Holly Black is the Real Thing: a gifted writer with a solid grounding in what matters. Her stories are dark and splendid blooms rising from roots sunk deep in myth and tradition.

To me the function of politics is to make possible the desirable.

My natural inclination is to think in scenes. So that's how I write, and the issue for me is usually: what to compress for speed.

Most comedians I know are quite serious, anxious people who find life rather difficult. As a consequence, they make people laugh.