Rationality is what we do to organize the world, to make it possible to predict. Art is the rehearsal for the inapplicability and failure of that process.

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.

Fears don't exist in isolation. They tend to rise and fall depending on what people think they can do about them.

JFK had to act before his fragile body betrayed him.

A commitment to human rights cannot be fostered simply through the transmission of knowledge. Action and experience play a crucial role in the learning process.

I'd make a wonderful Lady Macbeth. I'll wear a pair of platform shoes or something.

Risk models only have value if they are used effectively in combination with a limit management and control process.

I'm an idealist without illusions.

The winds of God's grace are always blowing, it is for us to raise our sails.

We are all really alone. We're isolated in our own mind.

To-day kings, to-marrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing.

The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders At our quaint spirits.