For me it's always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it's always sound first and then the line afterwards.

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.

If you think about it, finding true love is a lot like finding a particular grain of sand on the beach.

If you wanted to, it would be easy to find some crappy lyrics [of Bob Dylan] from the Eighties to undermine the Nobel Prize.

I thought the war would never end. And perhaps it never did, either.

Perfect love is long delayed.

Science demands from a man all his life. If you had two lives that would not be enough for you. Be passionate in your work and in your searching.

Photography is a magic thing. A thing that has mysterious odors, a little strange and frightening, something one quickly grows to love.

Women are aristocrats, and it is always the mother who makes us feel that we belong to the better sort.

I have always had a strong interest in history and finding out about the past can be remarkably helpful with working out the future, too.

In almost all cases now the police are as much an enemy as the others.

The art of movies is to allow the audience to suspend their disbelief. They need to use their imaginations.