Julian Casablancas

“No one leaves an old friend unless they are ashamed.”

“My parents separated when I was eight. I grew up with my mom alone.”

“People often put me in a V-neck tennis club sweater, driving a Bentley, but my life wasn't like that.”

“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.”

“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.”

“A band is a good way to break up a friendship.”

“The problem with touring isn't the traveling and the shows, it's the vegetal state you get into.”

“I over-think stuff a lot.”

“People are always arguing: New York or L.A.? They're both great places, you know.”

“Compared to people in Africa, I think we've all had privileged upbringings.”

“I don't really care about clothes, but it's about wearing something that gives you social confidence.”

“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.”

“Religion is never the problem; it's the people who use it to gain power.”

“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.'”

“Can our mind evolve to be something other than an extension of our animal needs?”

“It's not like I wake up and songs flow out of me.”

“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.”

“Working on music is the funnest thing for me, and I love it, and I could do it all day, all night.”

“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.”

“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.”