Whenever you listen to a piece of music, what you are actually doing is hearing the latest sentence in a very long story you’ve been listening to - all the pieces of music you’ve ever heard.

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.

The now reality is our only home, where everything already is. There is no other home we came from, and we might think we shall return to.

when you are brokenand he has left youdo not questionwhether you wereenoughthe problem wasyou were so enoughhe was not able to carry it

It is through the idealism of youth that man catches sight of truth, and in that idealism he possesses a wealth which he must never exchange for anything else.

The basis of insincerity is the idealized image we hold of ourselves and wish to impose on others.

You can swim in life and seawater, but both are hard to swallow.

I didn't have time. I was too busy breaking up Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's marriage. (on rumours he was responsible for Julia Roberts and Benjamin Bratt's break-up)

I won't do something just for the sake of working.

Today each composer is not only involved in aesthetics, but he's actually trying to create his own language.

From a historical viewpoint, religion is just a kind of superstition, and from a political viewpoint it is a tool of social control.

It is always an honor to work with those that share your passion for music and just enjoy making great music.