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I think there's some pretty amazing language in the Bible.
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Our music may sound big emotionally, but that's more to do with the playing, the level of musicianship and the full-on energy. Often, the lyrics are often quite small and focused.
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It seems like the record industry made so much crazy money in the 1960s that everyone wanted to get in on it. Now it's just become very corporate. So all of these people who despise music end up being in charge.
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The idea of dancing to bad house music is something I could never get behind.
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Funny songs aren't usually that good. Like Weird Al and maybe a couple of Beatles songs, but it's kind of hard to bring humor into rock music in an interesting way.
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The cliched rock life never seemed that cool to me.
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I was really sick of bands just ignoring the audience as a posture in rock music. And I think we fed off each other in terms of trying to engage the audience, not in a hammy way, but actually trying to be aware of the space that you are playing in and trying to connect in some way through the music.
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The idea of peer critique, of talking about each other's art - I just found it so useless.
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It's a lot easier to sabotage your career than to have a career to sabotage.
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I studied the Bible and philosophy in college, and I think in a certain sense that's the kind of stuff that still makes my brain work.
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There are so many bands that I'm kind of aware of through media about them, and it ends up filtering my experience of the actual music.
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The Flaming Lips have been on Warner Bros. forever, and certainly everything I heard growing up was on a major label in some way, from the Cure to Radiohead to Bjork.
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The work that Partners in Health do in Haiti benefits the whole world.
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I had a somewhat religious upbringing. Not strict, but it was there, and I'm kind of thankful for that. If you grow up just watching MTV, that's its own form of religion, and it's not even based on happiness or communal responsibility. I mean, try to construct a worldview out of that.
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Usually, I think you have most of your musical influences locked down by the time you're 16.
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If you think about it, if you've ever been to a Catholic service, it's practically a laser light show. It's very dramatic, very theatrical. The outfits they wear, it's all designed to be impressive.
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My favorite English teacher in high school showed me 'Brazil' when I was 15, and it blew my mind. It's one of those movies that's revealed itself in different ways as I've gone back to it over the years.
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Whenever you're talking about meaning, basically... I think a lot of the human experience has to do with trying to understand what things mean, and there's not really any tools to do that unless you're thinking about it in a more spiritual or philosophical realm.
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I love my iPhone; it's great to have a camera around all the time.
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My parents live near the ocean, and I've spent a lot of time walking through the water at night, being around the water.
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Everyone has their own talents. It's up to the individual to see what you can actually do.
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I don't like to talk about other bands in interviews.
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I'm not a good hipster - if I let my moustache grow for weeks, it just looks like I have dirt on my face. I'll never have a glorious handlebar moustache.
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We're exposed to ideas everywhere. The world is full of ideas. I think that television is a pretty powerful medium in that regard.