If you've spent a long time developing a skill and techniques, and now some 14 year-old upstart can get exactly the same result, you might feel a bit miffed I suppose, but that has happened forever.

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.

... true evil needs no reason to exist, it simply is and feeds upon itself.

If a due participation of office is a matter of right how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few: by resignation none.

The Seinfeld motto: No learning, no hugging.

The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men.

New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!

I don't like this official/unofficial distinction. It sound, er, officious.

All humor is based on hostility - that's why World War Two was funny.

Rhythm is a perception of time... when drawing, the tiredness of the hand is a rhythm.

I write because I can't imagine not writing.

A certain excess of animal spirits with thoughtless good-humor will often make more enemies than the most deliberate spite and ill-nature, which is on its guard, and strikes with caution and safety.