Ron Mael

“It's almost as if the most successful people don't put too much effort into being so brilliant at what they do, that they're just doing extraordinary things. The truth, however, is they're putting more and more effort into maintaining their levels of excellence.”

“In the U.S., many people thought what we were doing was frothy, silly, just not serious enough. The kind of pop role-playing we were aiming for was out of place in American pop culture.”

“We're always just trying to keep ourselves interested enough to make music that will excite other people in the same way that we feel excited doing it.”

“We want to challenge even the people who are familiar with what we've done in the past.”

“To be sitting on a movie set in Brussels and watching Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard singing something you wrote - it's surreal, way beyond what we expected.”

“We would have loved to have stayed in the U.K. but we're creatures of California and we missed the ocean and most of all the sun.”

“Well, some people assume when Russell is singing that it is coming from his feelings, but sometimes he's just playing a character.”

“Of course everybody wants to be filthy stinking rich. But we've seen the effect that having that kind of massive success has had on other people musically. I really think that our music has gotten stronger because of a slight level of fear you get when you don't have that kind of success.”

“You want to seek out the things that inspire you to keep doing what you're doing.”

“I don't think it's especially praiseworthy that even in those periods when things around us were kind of dire, we were working on the music. There isn't an alternative; that kind of work ethic is all that there is.”

“When things come back and we're in some small way cast as the originators of a movement, we don't take it as much as a compliment as some people may consider it.”

“We really like pop music, and it's not something to look down on or to legitimize. It is what it is.”

“I have a huge interest in sports, and I study the way athletes operate throughout their careers.”

“I never felt comfortable with long hair so it didn't make sense to be looking that way.”

“There's something about Cannes being this ultimate film destination, and we're passionate about films; we grew up with foreign films.”

“When we started it was only for the fun. We never had any thoughts of legacy or anything like that. It was a thrill to have one album released. Music was only a fun thing to do for us, I was studying graphic design and Russell film - but it gradually became something more than the other stuff.”

“Gould recorded Bach's 'Variations' twice but the 1955 one was so fresh. He had a quirky approach to playing and he looked better than anybody: he would lean back on a tiny stool, wearing overcoats and scarves.”

“Our main love has always been pop music. We love the restrictions of it in a certain sense, the length and the repetitiveness. But then how much can you get away with - our intention is always to stretch ourselves.”

“I'm so happy that the first time Russell and I saw 'Annette' with an audience was at the Cannes Film Festival, and even more pleased that it got such a strong positive reaction because that's pretty much the top honor when it comes to screening a film.”

“We're not trying to fulfill what Sparks is supposed to be; it's trying to begin again each time, but obviously, there's a sensibility that we can't escape. But what we can control - the externals and also just the strength of the material - just within our own sensibility, that's something that we really try to judge pretty harshly.”