Rostam Batmanglij

“I can't even begin to express the joy I get from writing songs, both on my own and with others, I hold it all sacred.”

“I'll probably continue writing songs about New York until I die.”

“I think that's kind of the perfect mix, where you do something that you're not sure about, you feel like you're taking a risk, and then you turn around and look at the artists that you're collaborating with and you can read the expression on their face if they like it or they hate it.”

“Even though I've been making electronic music since I was 14, it's hard for people to see you as a producer with a musical identity when you're contextualized in a band that performs on a stage.”

“I always felt more connected with people who are proud of who they are.”

“I'm not interested in anyone who would want me for the wrong reasons.”

“I admire Brian Eno so much in how he seems to push the idea of less being more - his touch is to crack open a window and let the light in.”

“I was listening 'Plastic Ono Band,' the John Lennon album a lot, and that might have had some inspiration on me.”

“I think when I work with artists, I'm at their service, and I'm at the service of either their vision or a vision that we find together and we share.”

“Classical music can be catchy, so can African instrumental guitar music. It's not just pop songs that are catchy. Rhythms can be catchy, too.”

“Some of the journalists who've ended up writing about our band - and this is disappointing to say - have a very narrow outlook. And because of that they fundamentally misunderstand us.”

“What I love is the openness of collaboration.”

“Because of who I am, and how open I am, there's something inherently political about just writing love songs.”

“I'd like to release solo songs on a regular basis, but it's pretty difficult for me to finish them.”

“I am a very big fan of Brian Eno, of his work as an artist and making his music, and as a producer. In some ways, I have looked to his career as a model for my own.”

“As a person who doesn't identify as straight, any love song I write is contextualized by a queer identity.”

“I work on music with different people, and I work on music on my own. That's my life.”

“I don't have to just have one kind of life. I can have several different creative lives.”

“On the song 'Step,' the chorus is Ezra is singing into my laptop with the laptop microphone, and you can hear the trains going by my apartment, but we liked the quality of that recording.”

“I'm very aware of what, say, electric guitar recordings in the '60s sounded like.”