Admirers can be a tremendous force for conservatism.

I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with energy.

Ambient music must be as ignorable as it is interesting.

Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences.

The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band

I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.

My guitar only has five strings 'cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there.

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that's what the music is about.

Everything is an experiment until it has a deadline. That gives it a destination, context, and a reason.

Well, I am a dilettante. It's only in England that dilettantism is considered a bad thing. In other countries it's called interdisciplinary research.

Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.

Your silence holds the mysterious and beautiful secrets of your life. Feel it, love it, adore it, live it, and enjoy it.

The children almost broken by the world become the adults most likely to change it.

How sad, he thought, that desire found new objects but did not abate, that when it came to longing there was no end.

I've had to fight for roles and I've lost a hundred roles, but 'Smoking' and 'Smith' were phone calls. That's the dream.

I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday.

I have made it a principle to give advice that does not serve my personal interest but rather the common interests.

The Federal Reserve bank buys government bonds without one penny.

You have to learn it all, then forget it and start again like a child. This is the inner evolution.

I felt very bad in Washington. . . I didn't like my job, and I didn't know what was going to happen to me, and I was cold and half-hungry, so I wrote a great many poems.

I am now considered such a monster, that I hesitate to darken with my shadow, the doors of those I love, lest I should bring upon them misfortune.