Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that's what the music is about.

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.

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 something is good, you must torture it mercilessly until it is either dead or great.

That's not water. That's socialism juice. We should bomb Lake Erie.

Man wants but little here below Nor wants that little long.

My songs aren't bubble gum pop dance songs and I don't have background dancers on every single song.

I think a lot of snowflakes are alike...and I think a lot of people are alike too.

Girls Scouts taught me to succeed (cookie selling) and to fail (knot tying) and to learn and benefit from both.

Look to the lilies how they grow!

If we know God is for us, then it shouldn't matter how we feel, or what other people think of us.

The central premise of great leadership is recognizes that fundamental fact, that not of us are fixed entities, and taking responsibility for making sure that we bring out our people's best selves.

I honestly haven't thought about it much. When it comes time for me to retire, I don't think I'll know going into that season. I'll have to evaluate it at the end of each year.

A Wired reader told me once, Get a life, which I read from the back of a yacht in the Aegean, while eating fresh sea urchins and drinking terrific Montrachet.