If someone's really busy listening to other CDs, and worried about what's new and what's truly relevant for discourse now, maybe it isn't that interesting. To me it is, because I'm tuned into that and that's what I like, so it's interesting to me. It's all I can do.

Stephen Malkmus

We're probably a couple of freaks who've created their own little universe, are living in our own little world and that's the only place where we can survive.

Stephen Malkmus

couple littles world

I'm sort of socially inept, so music is my way to connect to people. It's a means of socializing and having a life. Otherwise I wouldn't bother. I would just make home recordings and play them for myself. And that's not really healthy.

Stephen Malkmus

home mean people

I don't know if you look back on your life and just see successes, but probably the first things that pop up are the regrets.

Stephen Malkmus

regret looks firsts

I do play soccer, but it's exhausting in a way.

Stephen Malkmus

soccer

If a voice is just too nice, without an edge, it kinda all flows by. You forget it. You don't listen to the lyrics.

Stephen Malkmus

voice nice flow

I'm not sure if you can blame everything on the American way of life, but the United States are big. So, if you have a lot of people there, the percentage of stupid people is bound to be higher.

Stephen Malkmus

united-states stupid people

I was a kid, I loved music, that was our social thing. That's what we bonded on. That's what my Saturday nights were, looking to see what bands were playing. And some of those people were the coolest people ever. I want to participate in that. And I hope other people feel that and they're like, "Yeah man, this is part of it, this is why I love music."

Stephen Malkmus

men night kids

Well, you know, it's a younger person, and it was maybe an effort to be a little more sincere and adult about the lyrics occasionally, which is a good thing. It's nice that it's not too self-conscious like some of our lyrics could be.

Stephen Malkmus

effort nice self

I didn't really like confessional poetry or things. They seemed sort of dated to me, or just corny.

Stephen Malkmus

corny

We're not on a desperate mission to write chart compatible stuff.

Stephen Malkmus

desperate stuff writing

Despite my own doubts of being marketable or crushworthy, my goal was to write a record of peppy pop songs, hopefully without annoying anybody.

Stephen Malkmus

goal writing song

There's always a chance, a goal to make something different and get it right, finally.

Stephen Malkmus

different chance goal

I like a narrative, even if it's fractured, or kind of psychedelic. But my favorite thing is if I hear words and I close my eyes and the connotations or the image I get in my head, combine with the sound of them - sometimes phonetics. I'm just stringing those together.

Stephen Malkmus

eye sound together

I like that band Get Hustle. They're cool live. I haven't heard their records, though.

Stephen Malkmus

hustle records band

A good voice isn't so important. It's more important to sound really unique.

Stephen Malkmus

voice important unique

I'd like to ghost-write Liz Phair's novel. But I don't really know about that. It seems like a dignified thing to segue into as I approach the other side of 45. My hands are just full right now. There's the potential to try to write some kind of biography of Pavement - sort of a cryptic, nonfiction/fiction blowout. The story's never been told well. But that's a lot of inward-gazing that I'm not sure I want to do. I like to look out.

Stephen Malkmus

kind writing trying

I think most musicians know if they make the same record twice, even if they say they don't.

Stephen Malkmus

records musician thinking

I don't want to be in Mötley Crüe or something.

Stephen Malkmus

want

One time I went to Berlin and, for some reason, everywhere I was going they had fishbowls. Like a fishbowl by your bed or a fish tank in the bar. They seem obsessed with this IKEA version of nature, which a fishbowl kind of is. They had that going on. I just don't really like having a goldfish by the side of my bed. I feel kind of sad for it, rather than happy. But I thought that was really weird. Maybe they have human fishbowls.

Stephen Malkmus

obsessed kind reason

With lyrics for me, it's usually musically-based. It's not really poetry- or writer-based. It's rock-based. It doesn't mean that I'm aping rock lyrics, but I'm writing from a music standpoint. I'm thinking more of music heroes, if they're in my mind. Not William Blake or John Ashbury. Sometimes maybe I thought of him a little bit. Or Wallace Stevens. I don't even really fully understand either of them.

Stephen Malkmus

hero writing mean