Every increase in your knowledge is a simultaneous decrease. You learn and you unlearn at the same time. A new certainty is a new doubt as well.

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.

...which, of course, is how I developed my love for both Kabuki theater and marshmallow Peeps.

Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.

Freedom of expression is no longer a political nicety, but a precondition for economic competitiveness.

This is reality. If [the American officials] want to believe, that's good, that will help them understand the region and be more successful in their policies.

I get off on hearing other people's voices. I like voices: they're my favourite things on records.

I always like to leave art and music open to interpretation.

Funny, how one good cookie could calm the mind and even elevate a troubled soul.

No one can insult you without your permission.

A crowd is not merely impulsive and mobile. Like a savage, it is not prepared to admit that anything can come between its desire and the realisation of its desire.

Well, it is alarming to have a president [Reagan] who doesn't know what he is doing.