Quotes from a great NYTimes profile.

The thing that transforms something from being an idea to being a physical reality is work….You can have outlandish ideas, but if you don’t work at them, they just remain outlandish ideas. Anyone can have an idea. Work is transformative.

The one thing I’ve kept most with me from when I was obsessed with K Records in high school and college is to maintain the spirit of an amateur, someone who is doing it for a love rather than out of a sense of expertise. The idea that music is free, that it’s not the province of some technician, be it Milton Babbitt or Jimmy Page.

many of the songs grew out of playful experiments. For the lyrics to “Stillness Is the Move” Mr. Longstreth had Ms. Coffman watch the Wim Wenders film “Wings of Desire” and write down lines of dialogue that intrigued her; other lyrics were drawn from an Excel spreadsheet of hundreds of pop clichés.

How writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days.