People who had empires, unfortunately, want them back eventually, somehow, someway.

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.

I chose to live in the Ether, to be starlight and legend....

Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.

I think you have to deal with grief in the sense that you have to recognize that you have it, and say that it's OK to have all the sadness.

I think it's the most extraordinary studio around. I would love to do my next project with Pixar.

Those who do not hope cannot wait; but if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.

Little by little old age renders the body less powerful.

I'm not trying to copy Nature, I'm trying to find the principles she's using.

I'm my own worst critic. I mean, I know what's wrong with everything that I've done.

I think artists can go to a level of vision that can often save us from a situation which seems to have no solution whatsoever.