Composition is a way of living out your philosophy and calling it art.

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.

Do not speak unless you can improve the silence.

To most women art is a form of scandal.

I have graduate students who have developed this ability to love and want to perfect it. Those are the students I spend a lot of time with because at this time they need that.

Mother, I want to see him fly!

I forgot how to throw a boomerang, but then it came back to me.

Forgiveness is a sacrifice. You're giving up being right about something, whether you're right or wrong about it.

If I'm androgynous, I'd say I lean toward macho-androgynous.

I'm not used to having a boss. I'm the boss. I don't need the money. I'm filthy f... rich!

That's why I enjoy acting: getting in the mind of someone else.

For music, I always just played music myself - and, I had rock bands and wrote songs and put bands together that were loud, but not especially good. That was sort of the place music had in my career.