The prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part of one's furniture.

With devices my technique is always to hide the handbook in the drawer until I've played with it for a while. The handbook always tells you what it does, and you can be quite sure that if it's a complex device it can do at least fifteen other things that weren't predicted in the handbook, or that they didn't consider desirable. It's normally those other things that interest me.

I do sometimes look back at things I've written in the past, and think, 'I just don't remember being the person who wrote that.'

Ideas reflect the moment, and so you have to use them. If you store ideas, they wither.

I felt extremely uncomfortable as the focal point, in the spotlight. I really like the behind the scenes role, because all my freedom is there.

You just make different music on a computer. And you can make wonderful music on a computer, but don't pretend that the machinery is transparent. It makes as much difference to what you're doing as it does if you play an acoustic guitar as opposed to a kettledrum. You're not going to make the same music.

Given the chance, i'll die like a baby, on some faraway beach, when the season's over.