Music is like a conversation. One person says one thing that speaks with a harmonica, with a bass, with a drum. They're all conversating, and we're just trying to find a way to make conversation rather than blah, blah, blah. But it's not really so hard a thing to do if you know the way to approach it.
Some people just use beautiful things to just shop or to have a tribal feeling - 'Oh, blah, blah, blah, I'm wearing Hermes; blah, blah, blah, I'm wearing Saint Laurent; blah-blah blah' - because it's like a need, a tribe, recognition: 'Ahh, my Rolex.' But I run away from anything which is too recognizable - it's my nature.
When 'American Slang' came out, everyone was like, 'This is the next big band in the world, and this is blah blah blah Bruce Springsteen Junior and blah blah blah,' and I was just like, 'I don't know what that means. I don't know. We'll see.'
All men hear is blah, blah, blah, blah, SEX, blah, blah, blah, FOOD, blah, blah, blah, BEER.
My whole freshman year at Duke, it was drilled into me that nothing was given to you, and you have to earn it, and this is a dog-eat-dog world, and blah blah blah, and blah blah blah. And you buy into it, 100 percent. You end up loving it. That's the way it should be, right?
MacPherson told me that my theorem can be viewed as blah blah blah Grothendieck blah blah blah, which makes it much more respectable.
There's a lot of pressure on Broadway. There's this feeling that the show has to be a commercial success and the producers have to make their money back and Tonys and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I want to make a drug. I want the science to be more than imaginary, where I think, 'We're learning these fundamental principles, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.' I think we are doing that, but I want to do something really practical. I want to actually, in my lifetime, help people.
I think as we get older, as we get more mature and more experienced, we do realize it's like, 'blah, blah, blah,' oh there's the information I need, and then 'blah, blah, blah,' right? So we do this triage, I feel like, of what people say to us.
A very sad moment for me was when my parents separated - a lot of crying, 'It's tragic, we're now a broken family, blah blah blah blah blah' - although my psychological problems stopped. I actually felt healthier.
In terms of content, a lot of rap is crap, with all the sexism and homophobic bullshit. It's incredible how rappers are always preaching nonconformity - you know, "I'm just gonna go my own way and be my own man and blah blah blah" - but they're the first ones to do so many things that they have to do. They have to do that hip-hop thing, a certain way of walking, and it's so conformist.
I move out here, and next thing I know I'm 25, and the only thing I've heard is, 'Can you get a coffee, can you hurry up with the thing, blah blah blah.' It was nice doing something and hearing someone go, 'Hey, you're good at this.'
I remember in The Conversation, they brought all these coats to me, and they said: Do you want him to look like a detective, Humphrey Bogart? Do you want him to look like a blah blah blah. I didn't know, and said the theme is 'privacy' and chose the plastic coat you could see through. So knowing the theme helps you make a decision when you're not sure which way to go.
As you become an adult, shame gets introduced and reintroduced constantly to you. So where something that, to a child, just is what it is - you know, your father's violent but he loves you and that's just the way it is - later on you realize that this is like different, shameful, blah blah blah.
I remember when in the early days of rock'n'roll, when everything sounded totally different, all amazing and blah blah blah blah blah. Now you can play me one second of any record from that time, and I'll say "1959" or "1961." I can hear precisely. It's like it has a huge date stamp on it.
And he was like "The sedative in the blood, blah, blah, four hours, blah, blah, nerdspeak, geektalk -" -Abby
I've always said it's easier for bands to make a hard stance - like, we don't do commercials or whatever, blah blah blah - when you've sold billions of records. It's super-easy to be righteous when you're rich.