"Our relationships are usually about two forces of will not wanting to compromise. True love is about surrendering in complete service to another being. And I don’t think that can happen - at least not on this planet Earth."
"It sounds like Devendra [Banhart] kind of grew up in this strange kind of cultish environment and I don’t mean that word in a demeaning way. I think we probably come from similar backgrounds. There’s a little bit of that in my history. The religious environment I grew up in was so varied, so inconsistent, and had so many faces. What I perceived in major organized religion was order and a kind of consistency I didn’t see in my family life. People see the term Christian attached to me and they think, ‘OK, he must be fundamentalist Christian, and then he must be a Republican. Oh, then he must have voted for George Bush, so he must be a bigot.’ It’s just like one thing leads to another. I’m sure if I were to sit down with Jerry Falwell or anyone like that it would be very uncomfortable. Yet in theological terms, we worship the same God, and that’s a very awkward kind of thing to reconcile with. The religious environment is a big problem, but I don’t really know how to start talking about it. […] Ohhh, the clarity of all things will be revealed in the afterlife, and there will be a refinement of character for all of us, I hope. It’s all politics anyway—religion here is politics."
"An object, just by the nature of its physical being, resists possession in a way because it’s an object, you know. You can’t carry around a building obviously. You can’t possess it, in a way. I guess you can own it, like real estate, but that’s short-lived anyway. Music is nebulous. We talk about intellectual property of music, but that’s just politics. I don’t know what that means. That’s why I really believe that the song sustains its own consciousness and is dispossessed of its owner, and then it basically yields to the multitudes of listeners, of consumers, and everyone owns the song. It’s such a relief for me to acknowledge that because I feel far less possessive of my own music, and I feel less earnest and less despairing about its worth, or its value, and more willing to just make it, create it, do my best work possible, and then give it away. We’re born into this world naked and screaming, with no possessions. And we leave in the same way, you know? We can’t take it with us. All we have is our bodies and our souls and that’s it. I don’t even think our bodies are our own. I think that’s just borrowed. So give it away, that’s what I say. Give it away."
"I don’t know. I still feel like I have a lot to learn in the realm of sound experimentation, and I think I would like things to get noisier and weirder and more distressed and more aggressive, but I don’t know if that’s something that would be suitable for public consumption. It might just be like a private exercise in which I spend time alone making all those sounds, and then at some point get back to songwriting…my imperative or my objective is songwriting. And I think it’s safe to say that The Age of Adz is a bit of a tangent away from songwriting. It’d be nice to kind of return to songwriting again."
"The story of my life is the story of half-finished projects and half-read books."
"I would prefer to sell fewer and fewer records and I know that sounds absurd and..false modesty..but I’m not driven by the desire to be recognized on a much bigger scale. I’m really kind of privileged and comfortable in having the freedom to make my music and to release it and enough people support it and buy it that it allows me to continue making it to tour and that’s a big deal for me to have that freedom and that’s really all I need. I don’t need money. I don’t need fame and fortune. I don’t need recognition. I’m really happy with where I’m at now."
"I really believe that art is not part of reality. It belongs to a spiritual dimension. Music is a transcendent language that allows the communication of a deeper joy. Music is a powerful force."
"Most of the music is the result of sound, not songs. It’s a very intuitive process and I can say that this is my least “focused” album. I’m learning to cherish mishaps and coincidences in the recording process. Sloppiness can be beautiful in music. Take Kanye West’s latest album. That’s very cleverly put together, but there’s a lot of room left for noise, disturbing sounds, exciting voices and particular structures. The vitality and uniqueness of his voice are done much more justice."
"I’m a very self-conscious person, I think we all are, but I’m especially not very comfortable in my body. I always feel really weird and awkward on the street or on the stage. It has nothing to do with circumstances, it’s just an ongoing psychological state, like white noise."
