It feels very good to sing in Russian. It feels so good inside my body.
I’m the hero of this story, I don’t need to be saved.
It’s a real gift to be able to have the works of brilliant, great people to learn from and build from. It gives you so much more to draw on, and then you don’t have to be all about three-chord pop songs. I don’t really like that kind of writing.
We’re trying to be faithful but we’re cheating, cheating, cheating.
No one’s laughing at God -We’re all laughing with God.
Pickle jars are just pickle jars, and pickles are just pickles.
Love what you have and you’ll have more love.
Somebody’s got to tell all the people to be like the water.
I started to write before I went to SUNY Purchase music conservatory. As an audition I submitted what I now think are really awful songs, but I guess they saw something in them.
Yeah. My singing and my songs were very influenced by all of that. People would come up to me and ask, Is that a Billie Holiday song? I’d say, No, it’s my song. The lyrics would be in my style, but the songs would be very jazzy.
I always have kind of a few books going at the same time.
I’d always wanted to work in the studio and experiment with sounds. Things that I’m really influenced by and that I love are like The Beatles and Radiohead, and all those records by bands whose music is really involved.
It’s a privilege to work with an artist that you really care for.
You’re using your headphones to drown out your mind.
I go through insanity before a show. It’s not really a process but it’s like absolute mortal fear.
I would really hate it if I could call up Kafka or Hemingway or Salinger and any question I could throw at them they would have an answer. That’s the magic when you read or hear something wonderful – there’s no one that has all the answers.
We’re living in a den of thieves.
I knew all this Beatles music. I knew the songs phonetically. It was like my whole experience of that music was out of focus, and somebody put the perfect glasses on me, and all of a sudden I could see everything.
I just like being all over the place and writing whatever comes to mind. Having the tools? It’s such a gift.
Maybe you should kiss someone who is nice, or lick a rock, or both.
Tomorrow you might get a phone call about something wonderful and you might get a phone call about something terrible.