A culture is the sum of all the things about which humanity can choose to differ.

I got an amazing 10-CD set, it's the music that Alan Lomax recorded in Haiti in 1936. And what's incredible is how fantastic the drummers are and how off-the-grid they are. The liveliness is astonishing; they're just totally alive, these recordings. It's very interesting, to me, to be reminded of that, that there was a time when things were not that tight.

I'm struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity.

Not many people bought Velvet Underground LPs, but those who did, started a band.

The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten.

I'd rather hold one note for an hour and modulate it so that it means something than play 3,000 notes in 15 seconds.

John Cage made you realise that there wasn't a thing called noise, it was just music you hadn't appreciated.