I like loud electric guitars because I like how you can just lose your entire being in the sound.

Swans are majestic, beautiful looking creatures. With really ugly temperaments.

The sexuality of children - there's a lot friction there. That tension interests me a lot.

You make your work and you can't ask for approval when you're doing it. Otherwise, it's going to be untruthful in some way.

The goal is ecstasy, but I don't want to make some sort of saccharine pop music. I want to make something that's completely uncompromising: the best possible music ever made.

The music takes you. It has to be alive. It's like you hammer something, and the way it happens to bleed leads you into new directions.

I don't want to sound like everybody else.

I'm the band leader. That's not to say that the other people are my minions - they all put in a tremendous amount of personality, and push the music in ways I would never expect.

I used to routinely break my ribs doing stupid things onstage, but I have a healthy fear of breaking my bones now.

I'm pretty confident that people are going to come along for the ride. If they don't, tough.

Making those CDs, signing them, numbering them, packing them. It takes hundreds of hours, but it's worth it because I'm able to do the thing I love.

one of those pertinacious tempers that would warm every day to a white heat and never again cool to forgiveness.

Luck implies an absolute absence of any principle.

When hiring, trust your feelings.

Lie. Put down on paper the most interesting lies you can imagine. . .and then make them plausible.

I think when you’re young you should be a lot with yourself and your sufferings. Then one day you get out where the sun shines and the rain rains and the snow snows and it all comes together.

Beauty always takes place in the particular.

My experience working with a major label was not all bad, I was blessed to go through that experience, and I know what to do during the next time around.

Everybody makes mistakes. You have to be careful when you make your mistakes. Now is not a good time to make a mistake.

I always did sing. It's always been something I love to do but it has also been the most private and most secret thing that you don't really want to let the world in on.

People who truly love to sing have to do it all the time.