Musician

The darned thing about mandolins is they're really hard to turn up as loud as you would need to be to play with a drum set. They cease to sound like mandolins.

I'm a massive Roger Federer fan, and sometimes I can see in his game the willful development of a tactic or technique that doesn't come as naturally to him, like fixating on improving the backhand. And I'm thinking, Hit the forehand! It's what you do!

I play the mandolin, which people don't often expect great things from. But it has it's charms, and it's my voice. I feel like I had as little choice in the matter as I do my speaking and singing voice.

I've performed in concert halls thousands and thousands of times in my life.

The great thing about jamming is that you come in with zero preconceptions. Someone might want to play something that suggests something else to you, and the next thing you know you're on a 20-minute adventure.

The world's music is at our fingertips, so if we like music, we kind of owe it to ourselves to check in with all of that.

Ever since I became better acquainted with classical music, I've wanted to try my hand at longer forms, but I could never really see my way to it. And after I got divorced, all of a sudden I had a lot of pent-up energy and lots of stuff that had gone into trying to make this failing relationship work that kind of got reapplied.

The great musics of the world are great for very similar structural reasons: good melody, good harmony, and a balance of feminine and masculine energy.

Everyone talks about how depressing Radiohead are. I don't hear it. They've created their own universe and it is dimly lit, but it's not inherently dark.

Great music is the only genre that actually matters, and the members of that club are far more similar to each other than they are to any genre they might be commonly associated with.

Having small children, you start thinking about how everything in your life revolves around doing the best you can for this little being, trying to make a good life for that person.

I'll often order a cortado and stand there quizzing the poor barista about the extraction time, how much pressure they are applying and how many grams are in it. I am that guy. It's reprehensible to the max, but it's how I go through my life.

People who are happy with their neighborhoods in New York always say the same thing: 'It's such a neighborhood!' And that's how we feel about Carroll Gardens. We see all the same people who have been there a long time and are very friendly and welcoming to us.

I went through a political shift when I was nineteen or twenty. I felt a certain way, and after the shift, I felt the opposite way. And never once did someone yelling at me or making me feel stupid do anything other than reinforce the convictions I had. What did get to me was people listening to me.

The radio - this old piece of technology that's still crackingly current - gives you this communal experience in real time.

My favorite bar in New York City is called Milk and Honey, a great cocktail bar.

There is a certain immortality in the change that another person effects on another person.

I love music so much. It's like the one thing I'm good at.

You go to the Grammys and you say, 'I don't care if I win or not,' and of course you care.

You know, I look at Twitter as kind of a roomful of people who are interested in what you have to say. The people who follow you are, presumably, somewhat interested with what you have to say.