When I started making my own records, I had this idea of drowning out the singer and putting the rest in the foreground. It was the background that interested me.

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.

as if it were a point of honor—which, indeed, a point of art often is.

It is always hard when reality intrudes on belief.

and love was lightning and remembrance

You can accept that things are awful and still have a sense of humor about it.

I actually got started in acting when I was in pre-school. I was really into dance and performing, so my mom had me in dance classes, and then I got involved in a local theater company.

Adjust your makeup to the light in which your wear it.

A fundamental premise of politics is we can make this work if people just never figure it out.

Between our way of life and communism there can be no peace, no paralyzing coexistence, no gray neutralism. There can only be conflict-total and without reconciliation.

Our biggest problem is that we have an entire culture shaped by a misunderstanding of the gospel. That so-called gospel is deconstructing the church

You know what I miss? More than anything? Coffee. -- Plutarch Heavensbee