People often put me in a V-neck tennis club sweater, driving a Bentley, but my life wasn't like that.
The problem with touring isn't the traveling and the shows, it's the vegetal state you get into.
Songwriting is hard - it's so easy to fall into the same traps. It's not like I wake up and songs flow out of me.
I have to say, I'm good with gifts. If I find something perfect for a certain person, I'll just get it and put it away in a kind of nook under my bed - a little gift hutch, if you prefer.
I am a fan of 'SNL' and a big Jimmy Fallon fan, too.
It find it funny how people from Boston and New York hate each other because of pro teams.
If you're in a bar and a certain song comes on and the vibe is just different, it evokes the kinds of things that you want to feel, and if music can do that it's a very special thing.
I enjoy songwriting. It's slow-motion improvising.
When you first start writing a song, it's fun, then when you start recording it, it's fun, but by the time you've finished recording it, you're sick of it.
L.A.'s kind of, like, seven really cool towns. It's so laid-back. If you go in the right spot, you can walk around, and you don't need a car.
I'm not a pop song lyric writer. I can't just focus on one simple meaning or even a double entendre.
The Strokes can play anything. They could play 'Thriller,' and it would just sound like 'Thriller' as played by the Strokes.
New York is in my soul.
L.A. is a vortex. The weather there tricks you into thinking you're on vacation, even when you're working fourteen hours a day.
Sometimes I've sat outside, not to tan, but as a result of that I ended up tanning slightly.
You know some of the people in The Strokes, yeah, their parents had success - but we didn't live like yuppies.
People are always arguing: New York or L.A.? They're both great places, you know.
I very often have night terrors. Just think of the worst possible situation, and it's a regular thing for me. I've died in my sleep twenty-three different ways.
No matter who I'm talking to, I always talk like I'm doing an interview.
Birth is a beautiful thing.
The artistic element of Manhattan has kind of moved to Brooklyn. Has it changed it? Yeah. Has it ruined it? I would say no. It is what it is. I say better that than an urban war zone.
I always want to make Strokes records and play Strokes shows.
The thing for me is I never had this burning desire to do a solo record my whole life.
I mean, I guess you could say I'm a bit of a perfectionist.
I think I used to do everything and then people had a problem with that within the band, so we're doing more of a communal thing.
Compared to people in Africa, I think we've all had privileged upbringings.
Boarding school didn't feel like my world, I felt like an alien; people there had a lot of money.
I think all of Manhattan has pretty much become a bar-slash-nightclub-slash-restaurant. There were always pockets of that. But now every corner of Manhattan is that.
I don't really care about clothes, but it's about wearing something that gives you social confidence.
I always reference 'Mad Max' when I think about what I want to wear. But it's a fine line between that and 'Edward Scissorhands'.
I over-think stuff a lot.
It's not like I wake up and songs flow out of me.
That it's a lot harder to make a keyboard sound not-cheesy than a guitar.
If the choice is between doing something supercool and having no one hear it and doing something equally cool and tricking people into putting it on the radio, I don't think the second option is some big sellout.
But it can be hard to experiment when you're in a band.
No one leaves an old friend unless they are ashamed.
A tour is the most intense, stimulating way to hear music; it's the best form to receive it. There's genuine excitement from people. I feel like we've stepped up a level.
Religion is never the problem; it's the people who use it to gain power.
I'm just going to try and be a good dad and not spoil the kid: give him love and encouragement but also discipline. Me and my woman, we don't want him to feel too entitled.
A band is a good way to break up a friendship.
My parents separated when I was eight. I grew up with my mom alone.
Can our mind evolve to be something other than an extension of our animal needs?
Desire is individual. Happiness is common.
Working on music is the funnest thing for me, and I love it, and I could do it all day, all night.
For a long time I didn't want to do a solo thing, but there comes a point where everyone else is going outside of The Strokes and The Strokes filtering process.
I'm happy to feed the illusion that I'm a lazy recluse.
One of the big songwriting things for me has always been: always think what you do sucks. Because the second you stop believing that, you suck. And that's a fact.
In most cultures, you can have a kid at 18 and it's not a big thing. It's not like, 'Oh, you've got to get a different haircut and move to the suburbs and act, like, 35.'
There are so many little places I want to play, sometimes weird places I think would be fun to play... a bar that's half full.
I see myself out of my own eyes, which means I have no idea what's going on the other way around. I just think I try to be a good person - and I fail.
I think a lot of people study the rules too much and then don't know how to be creative.
If it doesn't start with you, it dies with you.
I find it funny how people from Boston and New York hate each other because of pro teams. But, like, everyone on the Red Sox is a random millionaire athlete from somewhere else.
The best solutions are often simple, yet unexpected.
Who you are vs. who you wish you were: Who wins?
With a hundred ways to do a dozen things, why not try it all?
Making an album can be like being pregnant: you want to pop that thing out and show everybody!
Vanity can easily overtake wisdom. It usually overtakes common sense.
Greed is the inventor of injustice as well as the current enforcer.
When the Strokes first started playing gigs, instead of getting into a costume for the shows, we talked about how we should dress every day, in real life, like we're playing onstage. I don't really care about clothes, but it's about wearing something that gives you social confidence. Or maybe helps you pick up chicks.
I'm always writing something. I've got so much stuff, I don't know what to do with it. Some of it will be Strokes, some of it will be I don't know what - stuff for pop singers. TV themes. I've got a jar stuffed with songs, all these ideas that are just me humming into a recording device.
Whenever I go to shows, I end up looking at what shoes the guy onstage is wearing and the jacket he's got on. And when you know everything's gonna be under scrutiny, it makes you feel more comfortable if you have cool stuff.
I would prefer it if people thought that I didn't work hard, that I just played the guitar for three minutes a week and was like, 'Check out this song - what do you think?' That would be ideal. I would prefer telling people that I'm just truly talented.
