Something I’ve realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we’re smart about it.

I love San Francisco and Brighton has something of San Francisco about it. It's by the sea, there's a big gay community, a feeling of people being there because they enjoy their life there.

The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band

If you've spent a long time developing a skill and techniques, and now some 14 year-old upstart can get exactly the same result, you might feel a bit miffed I suppose, but that has happened forever.

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature... The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.

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.

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