Quotes from Devendra Banhart

I can't imagine anyone approaching art without the joy of experimentation. The joy of it is inherent... and that is how you flow with the reality of change.

Something I practice everyday is Tonglin. It's Tibetan for taking and receiving.

I try to listen to as much as possible. I know some people really try to avoid music when they're writing and recording, but I am very inspired by so many different musicians, and I need to learn.

I do have very small handwriting.

The best New York in the world is driving down the [Pacific Coast Highway] listening to the Velvet Underground. That's the best time I've ever been to New York.

I sometimes feel like I should be in the hotel business.

Dad had four world records, and they happened to be Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Ali Farka Toure. I tried singing like these people, and it didn't work.

I live in a total bubble where I assume everyone is super-liberal and democratic.

I've always wanted to write a song that goes, "I love you" and a book that goes, "Something happened." Something very direct.

In the past, I had this open-door policy where everyone was invited. And that was awesome, but you end up releasing songs that you don't really like and justifying it in your head.

As I get older, there's this new realisation and it's almost like a relief, and that is that I can never be who I once was, but only who I want to become.

I remember when I was a kid I thought I could either be an athletic water drinker, like an Olympic-level water drinker, or I could invent Windex. Which I thought was really smart, because it already existed.

I'm just trying to make rent and do my work.

Anne Imhof is a powerful artist from Germany making work that is totally interdisciplinary.

With music there's so many limbs and facets. Video and touring and merchandise and all those little things require attention. They're artist things but I tend to joke around too much with those things.

Caracas was a crazy place in the early Nineties. For instance, when I was 11 years old, I pierced my ear. No big deal, right? But everyone was so scandalised that they shut down the school.

The real hippie is trying to create something inclusive, something holistic, something loving and healthy which isn't in perpetual conflict with authority and actually knows that the only way to disarm the entire game is to step aside and not take any sides.

People love to take sides, but it's not effective. It's not really an effective way of communicating something, because you're either already part of the side or you're going to feel attacked and get defensive.

Whether I'm on a major or an indie, I don't think this is important, but at the same time I do.

Generally, I can't really do much without music playing - even writing or thinking. Peace and quiet means putting on a song.

I don't even know what a hippy is. I mean, hippy is an evolution of the Sixties movement. A time when people were trying to make a difference, trying to write songs that were political. People grow old. The hippy camp kind of breaks off into different sects.

I like clothes. I really do. I like going through colors, in a way. I go, 'Greens, man. Greens. Oh, yellow. This yellow feels good.' So it shapes your psyche in a way. But I don't think about it too much, even though I'm interested in it.

Of all my childhood books, 'The Giving Tree and Hope for the Flowers' really did change my early world, but after reading 'Momo' in my 30s, I thought, Ahhhhhh, this is the one book I wish I had read as a kid! Then reread at every subsequent chapter of my life.

Well, love is a difficult thing to hold on to. It's a slippery little beast. It will hold you and then it will elude you at any moment.