Try to make things that can become better in other people’s minds than they were in yours.

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It's still got the same strings on it.

If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn't bother to find new ones.

I don't want to do free jazz! Because free jazz - which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering - isn't actually free at all. It's just constrained by what your muscles can do.

American television really is pathetic.

I think one of my pursuits over the years is trying to answer the question of 'what else can you do with a voice other than stand in front of a microphone and sing?'

Except in a few cases like Music for Airports, which was a very clear case of noticing a niche [and] saying, "Okay, there's this situation in which people always play music, and nobody has written music for that situation so I'm going to." So, that was a very clear example of spotting a niche and working for it. I have done that occasionally.