I prefer to shoot the arrow, then paint the target around it. You make the niches in which you finally reside.

If I tried to make a commercial album, it would be a complete flop. I have no idea what the world at large likes.

I'm not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

Things that are very popular are not taken seriously, because the snobbish side of one says, "Well, if everyone likes it it can't be that good." Whereas if only I and a couple of other people like it, then it must be really something special.

As soon as you externalize an idea you see facets of it that weren't clear when it was just floating around in your head.

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

Most big concerts sound disgusting and awful and insultingly bad. It's like going to the cinema and been shown a scratchy film which is upsidedown and the bulb had gone on the projector. The quality of large-scale live music is so shocking.