I see 'Ahab's Wife' as offering an alternative vision toCollection: Offering
Doing interviews and touring are two ways that I can try to bring my music to people. It can be tiring, but it's better than working at Burger King.Collection: Kings
If you don't want to be beaten, imprisoned, mutilated, killed ot tortured, then you shouldn't condone such behaviour towards anyone, be they human or not.Collection: Animal
I read the New Testament, specifically the gospels and I was struck at their divinity, feeling that humans could not have figured this out on their own. We're just not bright enough.Collection: Feelings
When I was fifteen years old, the only distinction in music my friends and I made was [that] there's music made by people with short hair and music made by people with long hair.Collection: Hair
I learned in the last few years that it's really unhappy and really unsustainable to try and base your well being on something as arbitrary as record sale and critical acclaim and the interests of the public. All of those things are so fickle. So my approach now to music is I want to make records that I love, and I hope that other people love them, then that's OK.Collection: Years
When I tour I'm going to countries to play music for people. My presence in a country is not an endorsement or a condemnation of that country's policies. My presence in a country is an effort to connect with people through playing music.Collection: Country
Why can't a democrat get fired up about protecting the environment and enacting gun control legislation just as right wing republicans get fired up about making sure that children have access to assault weapons and banning 'the Catcher in the Rye' and 'Harry Potter'?Collection: Children
Nothing can stop us now 'cause we are all made of stars.Collection: Stars
Lord, I want to be up in my heart.Collection: Heart
It's better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one.Collection: Laughing
Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp—all others but liars!Collection: Dream
The world is too big and too intricate to conform to our ideas of what it should be like... Just because we invent myths and theories to explain away the chaos we're still going to live in a world that's older and more complicated than we'll ever understand.Collection: Ideas
For his sake I'm sorry that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil, but for our sake and the sake of music I'm glad he did.Collection: Sorry
Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.Collection: World
When famous people are nice to me, it feels good, so I'm happy to hang out with them. It's better than being at home, depressed, reading 'The Hobbit.'Collection: Nice
How wondrous familiar is a fool!Collection: Fool
These new metal bands are going out, getting drunk and going to strip clubs, and they'll be doing the same in thirty years. There isn't even an interesting self-destructive quality to it . . . it's just dumb.Collection: Self
One simple word: ugh. Is something still considered a conspiracy if it's played out right under our noses?Collection: Simple
I'm straight, but I love going to house music clubs and flirting with women and gay men.Collection: Gay
I think that growing up very poor in a very wealthy town gave me a sense of being an outsider, and I hated it when I was growing up.Collection: Growing Up
I love Thich Nhat Hahn. One of my favorite quotes of his (and I’m paraphrasing), he’s talking about cultivating happiness, and he was saying, at the very least, just be happy you’re not at the dentist right now. He was talking to someone who was having a really hard time finding joy.Collection: Hard Times
My goal is to make one-not a hodgepodge, but just the sort of record that I would want to listen to.Collection: Goal
It’s perfectly natural for me to sit down and talk about meditating and spiritual practice with my friends. But then I realize, how would it sound to a drunk cynical guy in London?Collection: Spiritual
I spent so much of my life reading about spirituality and reading about neuroscience and trying different meditation practices. It's a really big part of my life. But it's sometimes hard to talk about. There are so many people in the world who don't live in Southern California and don't spend their time meditating.Collection: Reading
Sit down, close your eyes, and think about dogs for ten minutes. On a very clear, physiological, and neurochemical level, your body is changed by these really positive thoughts.Collection: Dog
We almost need to cultivate - I hate to sound New Age-y - but to cultivate a positive bias, and really work to focus on those things and notice those things that are wonderful and uplifting.Collection: Uplifting
People who meditate and have a good spiritual practice, their immune systems are stronger. Generally, they are happier and healthier.Collection: Spiritual
All human belief systems are inherently flawed.Collection: Belief
A lot of people have realized that a good spiritual practice and a good meditation practice have real benefit. It’s not just something nice to do to make the universe happy.Collection: Spiritual
My goal with everything that I do is to present things in a way that I would want to see if I was in the audience or buying the record.Collection: Goal
One problem with a lot of musicians is that they remove themselves in a studio and make a record and assume people are going to pay attention to it just because they've made it.Collection: People
How do I transform pain. I guess the number one way in which I do that is by working on music, but also it can be anything from just talking about it with other people or doing kickboxing or meditating or running around with dogs. Or just simply trying to sit with it and be mindful and be aware of it.Collection: Running
When I can really open myself up to someone and show someone who I really am, it's amazing when it happens.Collection: Shows
To me, one of the easiest ways of addressing climate change and potentially remedying climate change is to stop subsidizing animal agriculture.Collection: Animal
I remind myself that the universe is 15 billion years old, and I'm only 46 years old, so my perspective is sort of limited and fear-based and skewed.Collection: Years
There's not a lot of precedent for weird, bald musicians in the Lower East Side making records in their bedrooms and going on to sell a lot of copies of the record. Especially if you look at the pop climate.Collection: Musician
I just want to try - on a daily basis keep trying - to make music that I really love.Collection: Trying
For me the most important issue is climate change because it in some ways trumps every other issue. Everything else we care about falls by the wayside if the Greenland ice shelf falls into the sea. And if suddenly sea levels rise 21 feet, everything we hold near and dear ceases to exist.Collection: Fall
That’s why I make music. When I listen to my favorite music made by other people, that’s what it does to me. So as a musician, I’m just trying to do the same thing with music I make. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But when someone comes to me and says the music I’ve made has affected them emotionally, that’s the most gratifying part of my job.Collection: Jobs
It's almost like a sign of mental illness to base your self-worth on the opinions of complete strangers, you know?Collection: Self Worth
I don't want to get too nuanced, but we have the electoral college in the United States and that means we don't have direct democracy.Collection: Mean
I feel that one of the reasons Brexit happened was that people stayed at home rather than going to the polls.Collection: Home
It's the age old thing: If you want to get elected, blame immigrants. It worked in the 20th century and it works now, and it's heart-breaking to see people make the same mistakes. They're looking at a complicated world, but they just keep blaming immigrants, and it's really disturbing that people haven't got past that.Collection: Mistake
I think that the current climate enables a lot of musicians to do relatively well. Twenty-five years ago, you could be a bass player in a folk-rock band and do pretty well - that sort of means that you're going to have to go get a day job. But a lot of my friends have learned how to write classical music for movies and produce other people and do remixes, and DJ and go on tour, and do all these different things. The more diverse their approach, the better their chances of actually having a career.Collection: Writing
NASA is an utterly fascinating place, and the fact that the buildings look so anonymous almost make it more fascinating. You walk by a generic office-park-looking building, and you have no idea what's going on inside.Collection: Ideas
I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.Collection: Sun
I went to Columbia University because they were doing a study on people who suffered from panic attacks, and because I suffered from panic attacks my whole life, I decided to be a part of it. They had this questionnaire where they asked, How many units of alcohol do you have in a month? The top answer was 40 or more, and I got really scared because I was having on average 60 or 70 drinks a week. And I realized that that was a bad sign.Collection: Average
I feel like someone who's meditating could possibly benefit their meditation practice and their well-being just by sitting down and thinking about things that they love for ten minutes.Collection: Thinking