My attitude to writing is like when you do wallpapering, you remember where all the little bits are that don't meet. And then your friends say: It's terrific!

When I was confronted with official tuition, the academic thing, I could see no relationship whatever between that and the music I'd been writing since I was 11.

I'm not a music lover in the sense that I look for something to have on. I've never had that attitude to music.

This sounds horribly pretentious, but I like to think that if music hadn't existed, I could have invented it.

I think music has gone through a period of something very severe, rather radical, rather the way painting did with cubism.

My attitude to writing is like when you do wallpapering, you remember where all the little bits are that don't meet. And then your friends say: It's terrific!

One thing I've tried to do in writing music is take on very basic things, very archetypal things.