I'm not really one of those people who believes that if you're a musician you can just leave that behind and start getting into politics

More and more, cultural groups are cross-pollinating, and we're getting much more interesting art as a result.

I'm an English songwriter/composer, working in Mandarin and trying to find something about Chinese culture that I really relate to and respect and feel some genuine emotions for - and it's quite hard, the pentatonic scale, and that, in a way, is why I think it works. Because I'm forced to limit myself to quite strict rules about what I did. Maybe that's how I avoided pastiche.

The best way to get to know Africa is to go there and see what it is. To know somewhere that crazy and that magnificent, you have to spend some time among people, the rhythm of their lives.

The Gorillaz cartoons seem more real to me than the actual people on TV. Because at least you know that there's some intelligence behind the cartoons, and there's a lot of work that's gone into it, so it can't all be just a lie

In the Sixties people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird, people take Prozac to make it normal.

I used to be younger than my producers but now I'm older than my producers and I think that works for me, that works better cause you get a good kick up the ... everyday.