There's already a great deal to do writing the songs. And if I were completely in control of it, nobody would be able to say "this song doesn't work."

Serious music isn't listened to in a casual setting. You don't want to listen to that in headphones on the subway.

Never try to do anything artistic when you're feeling something overwhelming. It's like driving a car: If you're experiencing road rage, pull over.

If you start out with a song sounding like Britney Spears, and you end up with a song sounding like Pauline Oliveros, you'd better have pretty good liner notes explaining what on earth you mean.

Well, there are certainly original things to say. But I'm not sure that a pop song is the appropriate format to say them in.

I think there is such a valid concept as "serious music," meaning that if you don't take it seriously, you don't get it all.

There's a whole kind of melancholy that you can only attain with reverb. That's an example of a technology introducing a whole new meaning.

At first I was laboring under the impression that Chinese lyrics didn't rhyme. That turned out to be untrue - they don't rhyme in translation.

I can imagine lyrics becoming better written by smart machines rather than stupid musicians. Songwriters generally have nothing to say. They may as well be replaced by machines.

My mother says I have boring percussion.

When you're making a singular pop song, you don't really need any subject matter. You just sort of say, "Uh, I love you." And then you try to figure out some rhyme for that, and there never is one.

Don't talk, just listen, and feel with all your heart.

I had a lot of trouble in school to begin with. I got left back in kindergarten, and I was in special education. My teachers didn't have very much faith in me.

So to hope to be able to have peace, to be able to have justice and environmental balance, are consequences of our behavior, not just our intentions.

Unless women are prepared to fight politically they must be content to be ignored politically.

While all bodies share the same fate, all voices do not.

I am as much interested in the smallest detail as in the whole structure.

For a new type of progress throughout the world to become a reality, everyone must change. Tolerance is the alpha and omega of a new world order.

Female masturbation is permissible unconditionally.

The value of life deepens incalculably with the privileges of travel.

My first years were spent living just as my forefathers had lived - roaming the green, rolling hills of what are now the states of South Dakota and Nebraska.