If you grow up in a very strong religion like Catholicism you certainly cultivate in yourself a certain taste for the intensity of ideas.

Painting, I think it's like jazz.

If you are part of a religion that very strongly insists that you believe then to decide not to do that is quite a big hurdle to jump over. You never forget the thought process you went through. It becomes part of your whole intellectual picture.

When you look back on a historical period of music, it seems so obvious to you what the characteristics of it are, but they're not obvious at the time. So, when I look back at my own work, I could easily write a very convincing sort of account of it that made it look like I had planned it all out from day one and that this led logically to that and then I did this and then that followed quite naturally from that. But that's not how it felt.

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 think that there's something that I still like about the fact of a package, like the latest report from somebody. "Okay, this is what they're up to now; this is what they're doing; who's working with them?

W]hat makes a work of art ‘good’ for you is not something that is already ‘inside’ it, but something that happens inside you.