I'm fascinated by musicians who don't completely understand their territory; that's when you do your best work.

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.

Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.

Your knowledge can stir the world, your intellect can move it, your wisdom can shake it, but only your love can truly change it.

Of course he despised the world as a whole

You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.

Fear / a motor, / pumps me around and around / until I fade slowly.

If you do improvising, it can sometimes end up being a waste of time. And if you do that, it's more or less based on a writing process.

The important thing is to be in love with something.

While we may open the books of the past, we may but grant flying glances of the future, through the mist that veils it.

Laughter opens your heart and soothes your soul. No one should ever take life so seriously that they forget to laugh at themselves.

We can always stick together when we are losing, but tend to find means of breaking up when we're winning. In Grace under Pressure, by Hastie, 1984.