Quotes from Devendra Banhart

Real hippies don't like me at all. They can smell a real hippy.

R. Kelly is my favorite singer.

The first paid show was in Los Angeles at an art opening and I was paid maybe, I don't know, twenty five bucks?

I heard somebody say that the war ended today, but everybody knows it's going still.

One not-to-be-mentioned major said they would sign me if I worked with a team of songwriters to help me finish songs, ha! Of course, in hindsight, I should've done it just to see what that would have been like.

When I came home my parents were listening to Pakistani Qawwali music, like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, they're listening to music from Mali, like Ali Farka Toure, they're listening to Brazilian songwriters, like Gilberto Gil, to opera, to Neil Young even, things you don't hear as a kid in Caracas. I love all the music they turned me onto.

For a long time, soul music was maybe one of my favorite kinds of music.

I love Meredith Monk, and with Instagram, I get a chance to see if she has a cat, and what's she reading.

As an adolescent I saw the Specials at the Glass House in Pomona, and that was life changing. I dressed the part - except not well, because it was a thrift suit. I looked more like David Byrne than a rudeboy; I still have a hard time finding suits that fit me. But I had my braces and I had my Docs. It was unbelievable.

I've always said that musicians are the comics of my generations and comedians are the politicians of my generation.

Personally speaking, Canada is becoming more and more beguiling and mysterious and I feel as though I really need to explore it.

It's all about sensitivity. If you have sensitivity then mysticism will be part of your life.

Canada has really grown and grown as this unexplored and very mysterious and exotic place to me.

I love 'Star Wars.'

People want to be successful, and they want to be acknowledged for what they do. Sometimes they make really great art and aren't. Historically, the best artists weren't. But their work survived.

I look at making records like you make a dish. A culinary experience. The way you throw in a tambourine, it's like spices or herbs. The main part of the song is the stock.

In the next life what would my career be? Oh, easy. Dried persimmon dealer.

We live in an age where many things are working hard to conk us out and anesthetize us. Anything we can do to shake us out of that- with no other purpose than to wake us- is valuable.

When real work happens and that's when real art happens.

At some point in your life, if you live in Venezuela, you come across or own a cuatro. Either at school, either at camp, either at a friend's house, at a birthday or Christmas or bar mitzvah, you end up with a cuatro. It's like a must.

Venezuela is incredible, but Caracas? Oh God, I hate it. The sidewalks get smaller every time I go back.

Growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, the ubiquitous music is salsa, cumbia, merengue, a little bit of samba.

We all have our vices, you know. One of my vices is ice cream.

Grizzly Bear's 'Knife' is one of the best videos of all time - everything Encyclopedia Pictura has done is really incredible.