Sometimes I'll go out to say hi to people, and I'm just not ready for it. It feels too weird, too intense.

The songs are all indexes of a time in the past when I was writing them.

Playing live is so weird because I go out there and I try so hard to give something, which will be recognized. And in turn, something will be given to me, there'll be some kind of shared moment in that. So it's very affectively intense - so much longing and lack of control.

I think that a lot of dystopian literature tends to be really moralizing and just doesn't tend to give credence to the importance of the sentimental. Maybe it says, We need love in this world, but it's always this tough, strong statement.

That's another thing in Alice Munro: it's always, like, some middle-aged woman who is going to cheat on her husband, and there's that moment where she decides to take an extreme risk. It's always after an extreme risk where life really happens for Alice Munro.

Every time I think that I've pierced through the simulation, every time I feel like I've written something authentic, it feels like I then sort of lose my footing with it.

It's hard to see how much of our social fabric is made up of a radical refusal to love people.

A lot of electronic-based musicians give very low-risk performances, and it's fun to hear your favorite band play live on a big speaker, but the live context is about the moment of risk and that moment of possible failure.

I feel like real thoughts and emotions involve the whole being. And they also outstrip little personal quirks, and they outstrip biography. You end up on a really special, universal, shared terrain in those experiences. I think it's available to absolutely every single thing made of flesh and blood.

I'm cool with being the sad guy, but I don't want to be the guy who nobody wants around because he's so miserable.

I do think that we're pretty future-obsessed right now, and I think that capitalism works best when we have a very short memory of the past, when we can just go forward seamlessly into a future of ever-new products and ever-new experiences - even though they're exactly the same, just on a watch instead of on a phone or whatever.

Luckily, like for instance the song Suicide Dream 1, I wrote it out of such an incredibly powerful state that the melody carries that affect. So when I produce that affect, that melody, with my body, I'm immediately thrown into it.

George Saunders is outside of Chicago too. I've met him a few times, actually. I really like him a lot. He's a really sweet guy. He's a big fan of my music now, too. I spent an enormous amount of time reading his work.

The interesting thing about doing press is that I learn what the album is about - I now know, a year later, looking back, what was on my mind at the time.