The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.

Frequently, I go straight into the studio and see what's around. I might hire a couple of instruments that I've never used - maybe a particular type of electronic organ or an echo unit. Then I just dabble with sounds until something starts to happen that suggests a texture. The texture suggests some kind of mood, and the mood suggests some kind of lyric. That's like working in reverse, often quite the other way around, from sound to song. Although often they stop before they get to the song stage.

I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function.

Any constraint is part of the skeleton that you build the composition on - including your own incompetence.

If there is a new fascism, it won't come from skinheads and punks; it will come from people who eat granola and think they know how the world should be.

All the best lyrics are written in ten minutes.

When you build a building, you finish a building. You don't finish a garden; you start it, and then it carries on with its life. So my analogy was really to say that we composers or some of us should think of ourselves as people who start processes rather than finish them. And there might be surprises.