Ira Kaplan quotes:

As the fans' voting reflected, people want to hear your best-known songs.

There's an actual physiological thing that happens to me on tour. There's that moment where I sit in my seat and click the seatbelt, and five seconds later I fall asleep.

Some sports teams hate each other in the locker room and that's what makes them great.

I think the record-buying public know what they like, and when people are trying to pander to them, I think they know it. They want the genuine article, so if we try to sort of "dumb down" for the mass public, I think they're too smart for that, and would recognize us as fakes. It seems like the bands that do crossover do so really on their own terms, and they just find that their terms just kind of make a big dove-tail with the masses.

It's one of the things that makes it enjoyable to keep playing; you have to approach each set differently and make some balance between what you want to do and what seems right.

In the open air you don't play as many quiet songs as you would normally.

I don't think simple is an insult. Something that's really simple and great is probably harder to do than something more complex.

I have grown more forgiving. I accept that not everything is for me. I'm not as in love with my own opinions as I used to be. And anger is not something that comes to me as quickly as it once did.

When people ask you to do stuff, it's not your idea anymore, so it's tough to get behind it.

I remember being in college and taking a class on classical music and getting a big laugh when I said very sincerely that I was not really into trained voices. Some of the greatest singers can transcend their technical perfection and still sound great.