I'm not interested in trying to have people who might like other kinds of music follow me. I don't want to please them.

If people can finally recognize you on radio without being told who it is, thats what you aim for.

I had a feeling about what I wanted to say, and I wasn't really qualified to discuss real things out of America because I didn't grow up there.

I seem to attract and be attracted to very willful, fascinating people.

Growing up in public is a test, and not many people know how to do it.

Guitars have been the obsession of my life. I first picked one up at the age of four and Ive been a guitar junkie ever since.

Coming from a working-class background, where my father did manual labor, was a good grounding; I was obsessed with getting a job or getting out of the house at 15.

Joining Modest Mouse was just consistent with what I used to do as a teenager: I followed where I thought I would make some interesting music.

I never took fans for granted. I always assumed subconsciously that people who followed what I did were just people who were kind of like me.

The biggest musical influence on me was my mum. We were both enraptured by music.

Now chart music is a genre all of its own and it's slipped away from what I understand pop music as. It's pretty difficult to take; it clogs up the airwaves.

running with sharp knivesnever got me so farbut running with youseemed lovely

I found the kingdom of far far away, prince charming would not be so far.

What I spent is gone what I kept I lost but what I gave away will be mine forever.

When you're sequencing a record, you want the listener to stick with it from beginning to end, and in order to do that, you really have to map out the journey from the first song to the last.

We betray ourselves into smallness when we think the little choices of each day are trivial.

Anger is momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you.

The first time I saw 'Sunset Boulevard' I was probably eight or nine years old, and it really struck me how it's so simply put and elegant, yet there's so much going on.

I love hearing my song on the radio the first time, but when it comes on again, I change the station. I already have so much of the spotlight on me. I don't need any more.

When you're young it's easy to confuse passion for love.

Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.