Michael Penn

“I think everyone has their own personal fashion.”

“I'm very happy for the success of Nirvana and Pearl Jam.”

“To me, playing with words is like playing with your food. You shouldn't do it.”

“Well, I was born in New York.”

“The nice thing about 'Girls' is, they don't want a typical sitcom score, with those transitional pieces and stings. It's more just finding little moments that need something to get you from one scene to the next. Then there are these opportunities for longer, more emotional pieces that I really love doing, where I can get into melody.”

“To get a song on radio requires an enormous amount of money and cooperation.”

“I've always loved working in the studio. I can point up nuances and detail in songs that I can't live.”

“If you talk about, say, 'Romeo and Juliet,' most people will think of it as a play about the highest form of romantic love. They won't realize that it is a horrible tragedy. And this notion of a soul mate is so damaging. That isn't love at all.”

“I was never somebody who was a fan of synthesizers. When I was growing up, they were so overused in pop music, usually to imitate the sounds of real instruments, which always bothered me.”

“I really enjoy getting to make records. I get to do something for a living I really love doing.”

“I loved the first Liz Phair album, and Beck's first.”

“Doll Congress was an experimental thing, in a way, where the arrangements were almost more important than the songs.”

“I think it helped all of us that we had creative parents. They understood what it was like when a kid wanted to get into a creative that it could be a struggle.”

“I'm an oblique guy.”

“I was into all the standard 60s stuff like the Beatles, the Stones and Dylan, and I like David Bowie quite a bit.”

“I liked The Band, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Costello, The Clash, Tom Waits and thousands of others.”

“If somebody were to have told me that I wasn't gonna get signed with a label deal until the end of my 20s, I don't know if I would have kept going.”

“That was a real debate for me whether to change my name, which I felt was a lie, or to make up a band name, which I also felt was a lie. So I just felt the best way to deal with that was to be honest about it, and make sure that the label didn't make it an issue, and just sort of brave the shrapnel.”

“The Beatles, Dylan and Rolling Stones are definitely my earliest roots.”

“I've always sensed 'arrangements,' whether stripped down or more full, depending on the song. The main thing is it has to serve the song.”