I don't find the business easy. The moment you start talking about the business, you start sounding like someone in Spinal Tap.

Being big and famous doesn't get you more freedom, it gets you less.

I think that pop, and to some extent rock, are like sport and fashion industry in that they're about the exuberance of youth. That's the sort of subliminal ideology.

I've always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avant-garde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really.

When I lost the use of my hi-hat and bass drum legs, I became basically a singer. I was a drummer who did a bit of singing, and then I became a singer who did a bit of percussion.

I find it hard to take rock groups very seriously or treat them with respect. There is something absurd about these gloomy young men getting together and banging away.

I don't know how many thoughts we have a second, but it's quite an amazing number, and just to pin down the appropriate sequence of those, all you really need is a pencil and a piece of paper.

I prefer the mystic clouds of nostalgia to the real thing, to be honest.

There's no field of music which doesn't have good ideas.

What keeps me going is a constant sense of disappointment with what I've already done.

In theory, I'd like to work in a group. But the group I'd like to work in, all the musicians in them are long since dead.

Meditation is the glue that holds our mind, body, and spirit together

Failure in and of itself is not a bad thing. But failing to learn from it is inexcusable.

In every pang that rends the heart The Man of Sorrows had a part.

I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life.

The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.

There is more danger of numerical sequences continued indefinitely than of trees growing up to heaven. Each will some time reach its greatest height.

The power of the people pervading the proposed system, together with the strong confederation of the states, will form an adequate security against every danger that has been apprehended.

Throughout my career, I had the great fortune to experience firsthand as well as to witness what it means to be a CIA officer.

I have a total responsibility to the reader. The reader has to trust me and never feel betrayed.

I always wanted to play a big, black man, but that would cost too much make-up.