Banks: "You have to be tapping into something that's pure and unconscious in yourself or you'll have no career."

Banks: "I don't really get a lot of clarity in my everyday life and my interactions with people. Most things that happen to me aren't very straightforward. They're either vastly confusing, or I realize that I'm inventing whatever meaning I'm deriving from whatever happens and it's filtering through my own indulgent perspective."

Banks: "Everyone is broken-hearted except for the drastically unimaginative."

Banks: "If you're an artist, you do what you do, and in a way, you don't even control the core essence of what you do. You try to mold it and develop a style, but the core elements of what you do are just part of who you are."

Banks: "You can't just imitate and keep coming up with ideas."

Banks: "I figured out early on that you gotta find your own strengths and hone them rather than trying to emulate something that impresses you."

Banks: "My version of truth in what I express, it feels like that opaque quality that you're talking about. It's just me being legitimate."

Banks: "It's not like changing one word with my lyrics is going to make them more intelligible or relatable. I was always very misunderstood and taken as very pretentious and serious all the time. I would think, "Do you not see there's a lot of tongue-in-cheek and humor here?""

Banks: "In an artistic and spiritual sense I'm really not that concerned about what happens after the album is done."

Banks: "I didn't come in and say: 'I'm a singer.' I came into the band as a second guitar player and a vocalist, but not the songwriter. I had been writing poetry for years, so I sort of had the nature of the words. I felt like no one else could sing my lyrics, so I took a crack at it."

Banks: "I perceive everything to be constantly subjective and strange."

Banks: "Sometimes you learn about the personality of your favorite artist, and you like their art a little less, because it doesn't jibe with what you had envisioned."

Banks: "It kills me when my lyrics are misquoted, but as long as people are quoting them right, I don't care what anybody has to say about them."