I think music should be tarted up, made into a prostitute, a parody of itself. It should be the clown, the Pierrot medium.

When you are an artist you can turn your hand to anything, in any style. Once you have the tools then all the artforms are the same in the end.

To not be modest about it, you'll find that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians that I've worked with have done their best work by far with me.

Lou Reed is the most important definitive writer in modern rock. Not because of the stuff that he does, but the direction that he will take it.

I'll ruin everything you are, I'll give you television.

I just put drugs down to luck. I persevere quite honestly, and I've got a fair amount of discipline that keeps me out of deep water.

However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.