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I once spent an entire night in a hotel in New York looking across the way into someone's apartment where nothing was happening but daily life, a phone call, television watching, staring into the fridge. Seeing how those strangers lived over that small distance and in absolute silence moved me deeply.

When I hear that I realize how quickly time passes and how everybody goes on their journeys and they're always unbelievable and they never go where you think they're going to take you and, quite frankly, it also makes me feel a little old.

Our live set's become increasingly complex recently; we've been doing stuff that's been vastly too much information for most people to deal with and I think it's quite interesting watching how people behave in those situations, under those circumstances.

Wherever I go, I'm watching. Even on vacation, when I'm in an airport or a railroad station, I look around, snap pictures, and find out how people do things.

I see people as haunted by the selves they don't know... I don't have children, but I have nieces and nephews, and one thing I notice is how fascinated they are by stories of their lives before they can remember.

I'll see a photograph of a character and try to copy them on to my face. I think I'm really observant, and thinking how a person is put together, seeing them on the street and noticing subtle things about them that make them who they are.

The places I've been, or passed through, or seen at a distance, have had as much an impact on my life as the people I've known.

I think growing up in a small town, the kind of people I met in my small town, they still haunt me. I find myself writing about them over and over again.

I love watching people, and that's what I do; just go for a walk at about 4 o'clock, and go down a busy street, where you see people coming out of school and you get a glimpse of their lives, what they're talking about.