I've had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I've often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head.

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.

What I have always found amazing is that God can use our bad choices to still get us right where He intended us to be.

There does, in fact, appear to be a plan.

The real test of business greatness is in giving opportunity to others.

Brazilian music has many of the ingredients that I strive for in my own music: Strong melodies and a disciplined but intense rhythmic concept, and interesting harmonies.

I often think it would be really interesting to take all of those who would wage war to the battlefield cemeteries, and say, explain yourself to the dead. Explain yourself to the dead!

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

I put myself into character for my songs.

When it came time to sequence the album, the new arrangements really demanded a different order. They were so different than they were before that the old sequence didn't work anymore.

It is not good news, but we have to face reality.

The people who have adored me-- there have not been very many, but there have been some-- have always insisted on living on, long after I had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me.