Polachek: "I want to keep different options for different futures open all the time."

Polachek: "Music feels so environmental to me, especially the process of working with synths or mixing. I started thinking about music as a psychological landscape as well. It's a landscape of the mind."

Polachek: "Being a musician, there aren't that many ways for me to consciously use a more strategy, math-based part of my brain."

Polachek: "With each project I'm always pushing for clarity."

Polachek: "My parents got divorced when I was really young and I was a very hyperactive kid, so both parents independently would play Enya at the house to calm me down and soothe me as a kid."

Polachek: "I like listening to ambient music, especially in very scenic places because I think it allows for the most freedom of thought."

Polachek: "I'm a horribly chronic 'get half way through the book and start a new one' person."

Polachek: "And a pang is ultimately private. It's not a thing that gets broadcast to the world; it's a kind of internal alarm that sounds when something has to change and it has to change fast."

Polachek: "We are always in a state of flux, and taking risks is important."

Polachek: "A lot of the music comes out of that conflict of wanting this other thing and feeling guilty about wanting it, and then it guiding me somewhere despite my kicking and screaming."

Polachek: "I really admire people's interactions with technology that aren't tech-centric but use it as a tool."

Polachek: "Well working by yourself, especially when no one knows about it, is totally liberating because it's very impulse-driven. You work when you want to work. You work when you can work. No deadlines. No conversation. No compromise. No help."

Polachek: "Everything I've done that I'm proud of is everything I've been the most hands-on with, so I'm just following that, really."

Polachek: "My mom wasn't thrilled about me being in a band, because she very correctly said she couldn't see any sort of stability in it."

Polachek: "I went to art school, and I studied drawing and video art, and I've always approached music so visually as a result that I found it really difficult in the past to kind of hand off music to another director, 'cause it just ends up being this kind of mid-zone where it's nobody's vision, really."

Polachek: "I actually don't live anywhere. I live on the road."

Polachek: "I think that's a big trope in pop music: the blaze-of-glory breakup. It's not one that I particularly identify with, but it's definitely possible."